NORTHFIELD, Minn. — When the Saint Mary's University women's basketball team was good Monday evening against Carleton, they were very good.
 
And when the Knights were good, they, too, were very good.
 
Saint Mary's held Carleton to seven points in both the first and third quarters, outscoring the Knights by a combined 33-14 over that 20-minute stretch.
 
Unfortunately, the second and fourth quarters belonged to Carleton, as the Knights outscored SMU 40-19 — including the netting game-winning field goal with 0.3 seconds remaining in regulation — in dealing the Cardinals a 54-52 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference setback at West Gym.
 
The Cardinals took advantage of Carleton's inability to find its shooting groove in the first quarter, racing out to a 9-1 lead with six minutes remaining, building their lead to a quarter-high nine, 14-5 on a Maggie Newhouse (Owatonna, Minn.) 3-pointer, and settling for a 14-7 advantage after 10 minutes.
 
Carleton — which went 1-for-10 from the field in the first quarter — found its rhythm in the second stanza, going 8-for-19 from the field and outscoring the Cardinals 20-9 to grab a four-point halftime lead.
 
The Knights opened the second quarter on an 8-0 run to take their first lead of the game, 15-14. And Carleton wasn't finished, outscoring SMU 8-4 over the final five minutes to take its four-point, 27-23, lead into the locker room at the halftime intermission.
 
And the two teams simply took pages from their first-half playbook over the game's final two quarters.
 
Saint Mary's scored 16 of the first 19 points to open the third quarter — and once again held Carleton to just seven points in the frame — to grab an eight-point, 42-34 cushion into the game's final 10 minutes.
 
Ten minutes that belonged to the Knights.
 
With the Cardinals leading 48-43 with 3:39 remaining in regulation, Carleton rattled off eight unanswered points to transform that five-point deficit into a three-point, 51-48 lead with 22 seconds to play.
 
Macy Petron (Royalton, Minn.) pulled SMU within one, 51-50, with a layup with 11 seconds on the. Jasmine Choi hit one of two free throws to make it a two-point game, and Brooklyn Paulson (Holmen, Wis.) answered at the other end with a driving layup that knotted the game at 52-52 with four ticks on the clock — and it appeared as if the game was destined for overtime.
 
Enter Isabelle Henry, who took the inbounds pass following a Knight timeout, drove into the lane and beat the buzzer with the game-winning layup to give Carleton the two-point, 54-52 victory.
 
Paulson finished with a team-high 22 points on 8 of 19 shooting with four 3-pointers, and missed out on a double-double by one rebound. Izzy Goettelman (Winona, Minn.) chipped in nine points and Newhouse finished with eight for the Cardinals.
 
As a team, Saint Mary's shot 38.8 percent (19-for-49) with eight 3-pointers and finished 6 of 8 from the free throw line.
 
The Cardinals (7-14 MIAC, 8-16 overall) close out their regular-season schedule on Wednesday, heading to St. Catherine's Butler Center Gym in St. Paul, Minn., for a 7 p.m. conference showdown against St. Catherine.
 
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