WINONA, Minn. — Saint Mary's University swim coach Eric Lindquist was desperately searching for the one word that would best describe Luther's performance against his Cardinals in the teams' dual meets last Friday, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

How about dominating?

"Man, I don't know what to say, (Luther) was huge — they had so much depth at every event, it was pretty impressive," said Lindquist, whose men — all three of them — were no match for the Norse in falling 124-36, while the Cardinal women were also beaten, 190-40. "A couple of years ago, our men's team would give (Luther) a run for their money, but this year, they were just way too deep. They had 47 swimmers — it was just too much."

SMU failed to record a first-place finish, but did manage several seconds, including Toni Nigrelli's (Kiel, Wis.) second-place effort in the 200 freestyle, where the sophomore posted a career-best time of 2:16.17.

"Toni swam a great race, by far her fastest swim at Saint Mary's," praised Lindquist, who also got seconds from Jenny Moore (Richfield, Minn.) in both diving events, and Sean Gibson (Chicago, Ill.) in the 100 freestyle (52.75). "I was pretty happy with the way we swam — the final team scores and the individual places might not show it, but we put together some pretty solid times.

"It's a long season, hopefully we can just keep improving our times each time out."