THE MATCHUP

Saint Mary's vs. St. Catherine vs. Saturday, Jan. 22, 2005 SMU Gym 1 p.m.

GAMEDAY PLAYER PROFILE

Jessica Weisbrod Year Freshman Position Post Hometown Rollingstone, Minn.

For the official GameDay Program for today's game pdf / click here (pdf)

WINONA, Minn. — It was almost like you could see the writing on the wall.

The Saint Mary’s University women’s basketball team headed into Wednesday’s MIAC game at St. Olaf on the heels of an emotional 72-58 win over St. Thomas.

A letdown was almost expected.

And a second-half letdown is exactly what happened as SMU, leading 24-22 at the half, was outscored 8-1 in the game’s final 1:46 as St. Olaf shocked the Cardinals, 58-51 — handing SMU just its second loss in the last seven games.

“I guess you could say we had a bit of a mental letdown (following the St. Thomas game),” said SMU coach Dan Messmann. “That was such an emotional game, I’m sure that took its toll a bit. Add to that the fact that we had two poor practices (Monday and Tuesday), and we were ripe for the picking.”

Ashley Luehmann (Lewiston, Minn.) netted a team-high 13 points and Jamie Rattunde (Rollingstone, Minn.) chipped in 12 for the Cardinals, who held a 50-49 lead with 2:44 to go, only to turn the ball over once and miss three straight field goal attempts down the stretch.

“It was a miserable shooting night — we weren’t just missing, we were missing badly,” said Messmann, whose team made just 4 of 26 3-point attempts (18 percent) in falling for just the second time in their last seven games. “It’s tough to lose a game like that — one you should win. But it’s one game. It’s not the end of thre world — we’ve just got ot regroup and get back to playing the way we are capable of playing.

“I have confidence in this team — they’ll bounce back.”