WINONA, Minn. — After watching his team sleepwalk through last Saturday’s 81-67 loss to St. John’s, Saint Mary’s University men’s basketball coach Mark Lovelace vowed that the Cardinals would be a different team when they took the floor against Carleton on Monday.
How right he was.

Unfortunately, while there was no lackluster effort on the Cardinals’ part, there was no win, either, as St. John’s scored 24 of the game’s final 36 points en route to a 59-48 win at the SMU Gym.

“It was like night and day,” said SMU coach Mark Lovelace in comparing the Cardinals’ performances vs. SJU and Carleton. “Hopefully the guys have finally learned that if we play the way we are capable — if we go out, play hard and compete — we can put ourselves in position to win some games.”

Which is exactly what the Cardinals did vs. the Knights — put themselves in position to win.

The Cardinals led 41-40 on a Terrence Smith (Broadview, Ill.) basket with 8:44 left in the second half. That, however, would be SMU’s last lead, as St. John’s capitalized on back-to-back Cardinal turnovers to take a 44-41 lead, and built it to 51-43 with 4:10 remaining. The Cardinals cut the Johnnies’ lead down to five with 3:10 remaining in regulation, but that was a close as they would get as SJU used an 8-2 game-ending run to hold its biggest lead of the game when the buzzer sounded.

“The final score really wasn’t indicitive of the game,” said Lovelace, noting that the Cardinals’ defense held Carleton to just 11 field goals — that’s right, 35 of the Knights’ 59 points came from the free-throw line. “Defensively, I thought we played pretty well, but you can’t send a team to the foul line 45 times and expect to win too many games. Offensively, we are struggling a bit to score — and the guys that we are relying on to doing the brunt of the scoring for us were on the bench in foul trouble.

“Our guys played with a lot of heart — if they can continue to play that way, the wins will start coming.”