WINONA, Minn. — Saint Mary's University women's soccer coach Dan Blank predicted that his team would need an error-free performance if they were going to stand any chance against Macalester Saturday afternoon.

After all, Macalester — an NCAA Division III national tournament regular — came into Saturday's MIAC contest unbeaten in the conference (5-0-3) and in the midst of a seven game unbeaten streak (4-0-3) in which the Scots had outscored their opponents 9-0.

Unfortunately for Blank, "error-free" was not in the Cardinals' vocabulary, as Macalester took advantage of several SMU miscues en route to a 5-0 victory — extending the Caridnals' losing streak to a season-high 10 games.

"I'm certianly not going to fault the effort, because our players went out there and worked their tails off," Blank said. "They gave 100 percent from the opening minute until the final horn."

The problem was, SMU's best wasn't enough against a team like Macalester.

"Macalester plays such a nice possession game, and their midfield is so dominating that we just couldn't generate any offense against them," said Blank. "(Macalester) is a quality team — and right now, we just can't compete at that level."

The Scots scored twice in the opening 45 minutes as Anna Gierke and Emiliy Miller both put shots past SMU goalkeeper Emily Strom (Waterford, Wis.). who finished with five saves in the first half. Dianna Kyllo (Kasson, Minn.) was just as busy in the second half as the Scots pelted the Cardinal net with 10 second-half shots — including goals by Johanna Shreve, Gierke and Licinia McMorrow.

"We didn't play all that poorly, we just weren't able to get anything going in the offensive end, and that made it difficult," Blank said. "The effort was there, it's just that against a team like Macalester, you can't afford to make any mistakes — and those mistakes we did make, they jumped all over them."