NORTHFIELD, Minn. – The St. Olaf College men's basketball team started the game on a 12-1 run and never looked back in a 98-56 victory over Saint Mary's University to stretch its winning streak to eight Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) games in a row on Saturday afternoon at Skoglund Center.

St. Olaf (15-7, 11-2 MIAC) held Saint Mary's (1-20, 0-12 MIAC) to one point over the first four-plus minutes and led for 39:09 of the 40 minutes to win its eighth game in a row. The eight-game winning streak is the longest for the Oles in MIAC play since a stretch of 10 conference victories in a row from Jan. 17 to Feb. 10, 2018.

St. Olaf's 98 points were its most since a 98-62 victory over Concordia-Moorhead on Jan. 20, 2018 and the team's 194 points in its last two wins are the program's most in back-to-back games in at least two decades. The Oles shot 53.5 percent (38-for-71) as a team in the win for their second-best shooting performance of the season.

Before the game, St. Olaf honored Kobe Kirk – the lone senior on this year's roster – and his family on the court on Kirk's Senior Day. The Oles needed Kirk, the third-leading scorer in program history with 1,609 points, to play just 19 minutes in the victory.

Sophomore AJ Uhl scored a team-high 20 points on 8-for-10 shooting in just 17 minutes for St. Olaf. Sophomore Rex Lamb added 17 points, four rebounds, four assists, and two blocked shots in 20 minutes. Lamb shot 6-for-10, including 5-for-7 from behind the arc, in the win. Sophomore Liam Roche had his second-best scoring performance of the season with 12 points in 13 minutes off the bench on a day where all 13 Oles who got in the game scored.

St. Olaf hit five of its first seven shots to get out to the 12-1 lead over the first four minutes and led by at least nine points the rest of the way. Already leading by 12, the Oles went on a 15-0 run to turn a 19-7 lead into a 34-7 advantage with still over nine minutes to play in the opening half. St. Olaf piled up 52 first-half points while shooting 57.1 percent (20-for-35) from the field on its way to a 31-point lead.

The Oles did not cool off much in the second half, hitting 50.0 percent (18-for-36) of their shots from the field in a 46-point half. St. Olaf maintained a lead of at least 31 points for the entire second half and led by as many as 43 in the 42-point victory. First year Colin Kirk had seven points and six rebounds in the second half for the highest totals of his young career.

St. Olaf, which remains second in the MIAC standings with a three-game cushion over three teams, will aim for its ninth consecutive win when it visits Augsburg University for a 3 p.m. tip-off on Saturday, Feb. 14.