WINONA, Minn. — The fact that the Saint Mary's University volleyball team went 2-2 at the UW-La Crosse Invitational last weekend was nice, but it had little meaning to Cardinal coach Mike Lester.

Lester was still feeling the lingering effects of last Wednesday's 3-0 loss to Carleton, a setback that not only cost SMU a shot at the Minneesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference regular-season title, but also put the Cardinals' hopes of a home conference tournament berth — or a tournament berth of any kind — in jeopardy.

"(Carleton) took it to us, they played a phenomenal match and just beat us in every facet," said Lester, whose team had its season-high six-match winning streak snapped with the loss to the Knights. "I've said all season that when we don't pass well, we become a very vulnerable team — and (against Carleton), we did not pass well."

In fact, the Cardinals picked the worst possible time to have an off night.

SMU, which came into the match leading the conference in attack percentage (.231), hit just .094 against the Knights. Ashley Dingels (Gibbon, Minn.) collected a match-high 18 kills, but she could not stop the Knights alone. No other Cardinal had more than eight kills — and only five of the other 12 players who saw action, had any at all.

"We were extremely predictable," explained Lester. "Ashley had 18 kills, but we also set to her 44 times — Carleton knew exactly what we were going to do, because it's the only thing that was working for us. We need to be able to pass the ball to run our offense, and we just never got it going.

"It's tough," continued Lester. "I was proud of the way we battled through the match, and I thought that third game was a pretty even game. We just struggled through those first two games."

The loss, however, did have a silver lining for the Cardinals.

Thanks to St. Benedict's 3-2 win over Macalester last Wednesday, the Cardinals are assured of one of the six MIAC tournament berths. In fact, the tournament's invitations have all been sent out — it's just a matter of who's going to host the event.

With its win vs. SMU, Carleton moved to 9-1 and locked up a share of the conference title and a first-round tournament bye, while St. Benedict and Concordia are a game back at 8-2 — and play each other on Wednesday, with the winner earning the other first-round bye and the loser joining the mix of 7-3 teams that includes SMU, Gustavus and St. Thomas.

"It's disappointing that we weren't able to play a little better (against Carleton), but this team still has a lot to play for," said Lester, whose team must beat Gustavus on Wednesday — and hope St. Thomas loses to Augsburg (1-9 in MIAC play) — to have any hope at all of being home to open the playoffs. "We can't worry any more about anything but getting back to playing the way we are capable of playing. We can't worry about any of the other things — we've just got to go out and play."