Despite guard Grant Shaeffer’s contribution of 20 points, the St. Thomas men’s basketball team came up short on Sunday, losing to St. Olaf 72-66 at Schoenecker Arena.

The Tommies (24-3 overall, 18-2 conference) controlled the first half of the game, taking a lead as large as nine points until St. Olaf (18-9 overall, 14-6 conference) turned the tables on the Tommies. St. Thomas coach John Tauer credited St. Olaf for its comeback victory.

“St. Olaf played a great game. In the second half, we gave up some easy baskets to start, and then offensively I don’t think we’ve played a half like that all year,” Tauer said. “They are a very good team that takes advantage of mistakes, and I think it’s a reflection of how good and deep the conference is as whole, considering they had nine loses coming into today.”

St. Thomas led St. Olaf 36-32 at halftime.

With the Tommies leading 46-43 with 14:13 left in the game, the Oles went on a 12-1 run to give them their first lead of the game.

St. Thomas could not trim the lead to fewer than six points for the remainder of the contest, and St. Olaf made its free throws in the final minutes to give the Oles the 72-66 win.

Despite the loss, Tauer has bigger goals for his team going forward.

“At the start of the year one of the things you want to do is win the conference championship; we did that. We didn’t win the conference playoff, but we put ourselves in a position to be in the national tournament,” Tauer said. “At this point in the season, 62 of more than 400 teams get to keep playing, and it’s one-and-done from here so our guys will bounce back from this and will be extremely excited to get back to work tomorrow.”

The Tommies are expected to qualify for the NCAA tournament despite the loss and still have a chance at being a host site.

The NCAA tournament field will be announced on Monday at 11:30 a.m. on ncaa.com.

Taylor Smith can be reached at smit9660@stthomas.edu.