NORTHFIELD, Minn. — It was a career night for Jamie Rattunde (Rollingstone, Minn.).

Unfortunately, it was also a night she and the rest of the Saint Mary's University women's basketball team would like to forget.

Rattunde scored a career-high 28 points — marking the sixth straight game in which the SMU junior has scored 20 or more points — but the Cardinals could not keep pace with sixth-ranked Carleton in falling 79-68 in a Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference game Wednesday.

Rattunde, who just missed her ninth double-double of the season by one steal, scored 18 of her 28 points in the first half, while Angie Arrington (Spring Grove, Minn.) chipped in 16 points and Ashley Luehmann (Lewiston, Minn.) tallied 12. The trio combined to score 56 of SMU's 68 points.

Carleton jumped out to an early 24-10 advantage, and led by eight, 35-27, at halftime. The Knights used a 14-4 run to open the second half to build its lead to 19, 49-30. After falling behind by as many as 23, 71-50, with 6:07 left, SMU made one last run, cutting the gap to 11 with 3:13 left on three-pointers by Rattunde and Arrington and a pair of free throws. That, however, was as close as SMU would get, as the Cardinals failed to score over the next two minutes in becoming the Knights' 11th straight home victim.