Forward Anna Smith’s solid performance of 12 points and 12 rebounds helped the St. Thomas women’s basketball team to a 78-55 victory over Augsburg Saturday at home.

The win puts the Tommies’ (9-1, 7-0 MIAC) win streak at nine.

Coach Ruth Sinn said coming into the game, she knew Augsburg (4-7, 2-6 MIAC) would challenge the Tommies.

“Augsburg has a nice team,” Sinn said. “They have some nice players, and they (Augsburg) did a nice job today.”

The Tommies started with fast-paced offense and a strong full-court press to pressure the Auggies. Impact defensive plays of the game included six blocks from Smith and four key steals from guard Kellie Ring.

St. Thomas’ starters (Smith, Ring, forward Carley Emery, guard Jenna Dockter and guard Kelly Brandenburg) racked up 63 of the team’s 78 points on the day. Emery totaled 15 points, Ring had 14 and Brandenburg had 13.

Smith said the Tommies played a great game all around, but especially played a strong defensive game.

“Our defense changed to switching on screens, and that helped allow us to recover better on passes,” Smith said. “Keeping them to the end of the shot clock allowed us to play better on defense and play more aggressive.”

St. Thomas held Augsburg to 26 points in the first half.

Momentum switched in the second half when Augsburg came out and forced St. Thomas to turn the ball over 10 times.

At one point in the second quarter, Augsburg was down by nine points, but St. Thomas regained dominance by pressuring the quick Auggie guards.

Ring said the key to cooling the Auggie defense was to pressure them to make more mistakes.

“We didn’t come out strong at all (in the second half). We got mixed up on the screens, and we were getting stuck. They were getting easy baskets,” Ring said. “We just switched up, talked about it and came back strong.”

Sinn said her team bounced back from the offensive slump and regained composure it had in the first half.

“There are always peaks, and there are valleys. You just don’t want them to be so big,” Sinn said. “We were stalling offensively. Defensively we were doing fine, but they were hot.”

Sinn said even though her Tommies lead for most of the game, the Auggies didn’t let that stop them.

“They (Augsburg) showed a very nice team effort because they kept on being resilient and finding a way to being successful,” Sinn said.

St. Thomas will host its next game against Bethel Monday.

Jesse Krull can be reached at krul7386@stthomas.edu.