WINONA, Minn. — Nobody said it was going to be easy — but even Saint Mary's University volleyball coach Mike Lester probably didn't expect it to be this tough.

The Cardinals rallied from a 2-1 deficit to post a five-game, 3-2 win over St. Olaf last Wednesday that, while it may not have been their prettiest effort of the season, kept SMU in the hunt for the MIAC regular-season title — not to mention in the driver's seat for one of the six conference post-season tournament berths.

"This was a huge, huge win for a number of reasons," said Lester, whose team moved to 5-1 in the conference, one game behind league-leading St. Thomas. "First, it allowed us to keep pace with St. Thomas (in the chase for the regular-season title), and second, it helped put some more distance between us and the rest of that pack that's going to be battling for those (playoff) spots."

Among that pack is tonight’s opponent — Macalester.

And while, on paper, the Cardinals appear to have the upper hand, Lester isn’t about to take the Scots lightly.

“Macalester is a very good team,” said Lester, noting that the Scots led their MIAC match against St. Thomas last Wednesday two games to one, before falling in five games. “They aren’t a team you can afford to take lightly — no team in this conference can be taken lightly.

“We’ve had a couple of weeks now without a lot of competition, so it’s important that we make sure that everyone is playing at a high level,” said Lester, whose team has been off since last Wednesday’s win over St. Olaf, and has had just two matches in the last two weeks. “We’re coming down to the last couple of weeks (of the regular season), and we’ve put ourselves in a good position — now we have to work hard to make sure we stay there.”

The Cardinals, who had not played since a 3-0 loss to those league-leading Tommies the week before, showed some signs of rust early on against St. Olaf, falling behind 19-13 in Game 1 and never being able to cut the deficit to less than six in falling 30-22.

Game 2 was a mirror image of the first — only opposite — as SMU jumped out to an early 11-4 advantage, then scored six of the final seven points to win 30-23 and even the match at 1-1.

"That second game was the turning point in the match — even though we lost the third game," said Lester, whose team dropped Game 3 30-25. "We talked as a team before the game that the team that committed the fewest errors would win the match. In the first game, we had eight errors, they only had six. In the second game, we had four (errors), and they had 14. To me, that was the turning point in the match."

The Cardinals forced a decisive Game 5 with an impressive 30-24 win in the fourth game, then sealed the win with some clutch play down the stretch en route to a 15-13 victory.

"This was a great match from a fan's standpoint," said Lester, whose team moved to 16-4 overall. "But from a coach's standpoint … it was a little nerve-wracking.

"We had some key individual performances," said Lester. "Tracy was phenomenal, as were Ashley Danielson and Lisa Engdahl (North Branch, Minn.). Ashley only had 12 kills, but she also hit .417, which was outstanding, and Lisa came in late in the fourth game and had some key swings for us down the stretch.

"Beating St. Olaf was big — we needed some people to step up, and they did," Lester continued. "Now we've got to keep it going.