Hamilton's girls basketball team was doing what teams playing defending big-school champ St. Mary's need to do.

Keep the Lady Knights from one of those double-digit runs that can ruin a chance at an upset bid. Hamilton accomplished that for the first 14 1/2 minutes of the first half. And then that burst came that proved fatal.

St. Mary's 12-0 spurt with 1:31 left in the second period Monday night took a four-point lead to 16 and the Lady Knights went on to post a 74-57 victory over the host Huskies.

"That's what we do,"  St. Mary's coach Curtis Ekmark said. "We want to put pressure on and keep coming at you. We finally got a run before the half."

St. Mary's, which goes with an eight-man team all of whom were on last year's state title squad, got a game-high 23 points from Harvard-bound Shilpa Tummala and 18 points from Louisville-signee Cortnee Walton. Tummala tallied 16 of her 23 in the first half, including four 3s. Tummala's fourth 3 caromed high in the air and came back down through. That was part of the 12-0 run that propped up a 31-27 lead to a 43-37 edge at halftime. The final blow was guard Chloe Johnson's off-balance 3 at the buzzer off an inbounds pass stradling the sideline.

"I don't know what happened," Hamilton coach Jeff Cain said. "Maybe it was a little bit of a mental letdown and making a couple of subs. The 3s hurt. One we thought hit the wire, and then the last one falling out of bounds. Those hurt us."

St. Mary's scored the first two baskets of the second half to bump the lead to 20. The Lady Knights took a 60-36 lead to the final quarter. Walton did the most damage in the third period, scoring six points in the paint.

What buoyed Cain's spirits was his team's resolve not to give in the final eight minutes. St. Mary's pushed the lead to 64-36, nearly engaging a running clock thefinal six minutes of the game. Hamilton (7-2) battled and actually cut the deficit to 68-53 with a couple minutes left.

"We told the girls no matter what to keep playing hard and fight to get back," Cain said. "We want to do that from the first tip to the last horn. Given who we were playing I was really proud of our effort. They are who they are. They've been there and done that."

Aliyah Dickson, who played at St. Mary's last year, led Hamilton with 20 points. Casidee Ranger added 15 and senior four-year starter Lauren Evans chipped in with 12.