St. Mary's

Going into the game yesterday, we knew we would have a tough game on our hands. St. Mary's beat us both times last year and just wasn't a good matchup for us. They have two of the better guards in the league in Lukas Holland and Will Wright. Our goal was to try and contain those guys.

After forgetting my socks for the game, I came back to find one of their starters (Tim Kunkel) in a shoulder brace that is usually relegated for serious shoulder injuries. I didn't know he got hurt and that was a huge surprise. It meant that Chris Palmer, one of the most productive freshmen in the league, would start in his place.

The game got off to a great start for us. We got off to a 15-0 lead to start and the bleeding didn't end there. The first half was full of us playing great defense and finding openings on the offensive end. Another good thing about the first half was that Jordan Schmidt got two fouls. As weird as that sounds, it was good for him to get rest because he has been playing a lot of minutes for us lately and I think he was wearing down. We ended the half on a little run and at the buzzer it was 42-19 in favor of us. It was one of the best defensive performances I have seen in a long time.

The second half opened up much the same for us. We scored the first six points of the second half and never looked back. The lead got up to 45 at one point. Our defensive intensity for the whole game was just fantastic. We held Holland to only four shots and 5 points. Wright finished with 17. To hold those two great players to 22 combined is a testament to our guys. They flat out got after it.

On the offensive end, we were led by Carl Hipp's 20 points on 10-12 shooting. Ray Brown played a solid game with 12 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 assists. Dan Andersen and Noah Aguirre rounded out the double figure scorers with 12 and 11, respectively. The final score was 93-57.

We have a huge game on Saturday at Gustavus. They are 6-0 in the conference right now and playing extremely well. It should be a good one.