WINONA, Minn. — Eric Lindquist isn’t about to look for excuses when it comes to evaluating his Saint Mary’s University swimming and diving team’s performances, so when Lindquist says his team swam “tired” at their last competition — the Macalester Invitational — he wasn’t just blowing smoke.

They really were tired.

Two-a-day workouts can do that to a team.

“Our main goal during the season is to make sure we are in top form for the MIAC Championships at the end of the year,” explained Lindquist, whose men’s team placed fourth in the six-team Macalester Invite field, while the women were fifth out of eight. “Because of that, sometimes we have to ‘swim through’ dual meets and invitationals — which is exactly what we had to do here.

“We have been doing through two-a-day workouts — it’s been a grueling week for our swimmers,” continued Lindquist. “And that showed a bit in our times. It’s not easy to respond to competing after those types of workouts, but I thought everyone handled it pretty well.”

They better have, since it will be more of the same this afternoon when SMU’s hosts St. Catherine, St. Thomas, Concordia, Hamline, Simpson and Minnesota State-Mankato.

“That (Macalester meet) was a great meet for us — most of the other schools in the MIAC were there, so it gave us a good look at what we are going up against at the end of the year (at the MIAC Championships),” said Lindquist. “And today, we get another shot at most of those teams.

“We didn’t put everything together the last time, but we came close — hopefully (today) we’ll be able to take it one step further.”

Ellen Meloy (Rochester, Minn.) led the way for the SMU women, posting a fourth-place finish in the three-meter diving (192 points) and a sixth-place effort in the one-meter (176.05). Becca Grube (Appleton, Wis.) added a sixth in the 100 backstroke (1:22.13), while Heidi Andre (Fairbanks, Alaska) was sixth in the 800 freestyle with a personal-best time of 10:30.14, and 10th in the 400 freestyle (5:08.48). Lindsay DeLaRosby (Two Harbors, Minn.) chipped in an eighth in the 50 freestyle (30.38) and an 11th in the 100 freestyle (1:07.80), and Victoria Evans (Junction City, Ore.) and Louise Turnquist (Woodbury, Minn.) placed seventh (3:06.38) and ninth (3:17.12), respectively, in their first-ever collegiate 200 butterfly.

On the men's side, Logan Twedt (Hastings, Minn.) and Brian Travers (Chicago, Ill.) placed 1-2 in the 800 freestyle with times of 9:45.13 and 10:11.79, respectively. Sean Gibson (Chicago, Ill.) chipped in a time of 2:10.82.

"I am very happy with the way we swam," Lindquist said. "And I'm very proud of the way we competed, even though we were dog tired."