St. Mary's

We headed on the bus for the two hour trip down to Winona to take on the Cardinals from St. Mary's. We beat them by over 30 the first time and we knew coming in that this one was going to be tough one and it certainly was.

We got off to a decent start and were up by five, five minutes into the half. We made it a 21-17 game with about 13 minutes to play in the half and it went completely downhill from there. They went on a 15-0 run over the next six minutes and didn't look back the rest of the half. We were down 52-36 at the half after our worst offensive performance all second semester and our worst defensive performance of the year. It was very disappointing to watch and it didn't help that many of our guys got into foul trouble.

The second half was more of the same. We couldn't get things rolling for a while. We finally got it within single digits and St. Mary's answered with a 9-0 run of their own and never looked back. The final was an extremely ugly 98-77 loss for the Pipers. They flat out beat us to every facet of the game. We outrebounded them by over 20 the first time we played and they got us by six this time. Clearly, it was an emotionally letdown from our game Saturday against Gustavus. It clearly shows that anyone can beat anyone in our league.

We were led by Ray Brown's 33 point performance. Noah Aguirre played his best game in a while with 14 points with four offensive boards. Carl Hipp rounded out our double figure scorers with 10 in very limited minutes.

SMU was led by Lucas Holland's 22 on 11-12 from the line. Gary Seifert scored more points than he had all year with a career high 17. They also had three other double figure scorers. They shot a solid 50% from the floor and a astounding 32-35 from the line. Props to the Cardinals for their effort.

Even with the loss we still clinched a playoff spot and still have an outside shot at getting the 2 seed or a home game. We are a half game behind both Augsburg (who beat St. John's) and Gustavus (who lost to St. Olaf in OT) for 2nd place. Should be interesting to see what happens this weekend when we have our bye.

We have a week off before we play in Collegeville against St. John's on Senior Night. Hoping to ruin that night for them.

Carl Hipp was named to the D3hoops.com Team of the Week for his performances last week.