Saint Mary's will return to the DIA final after beating Arizona 43-7 Saturday in the semis.

Michael Geib photos.

The Gaels put together a fairly comprehensive performance, although Arizona's tenacity on defense made Saint Mary's work for it. In fact, the only other college teams to hold Saint Mary's under 50 were BYU (who did it twice), and Cal.

The Gaels got things started with a surging run from flanker Alec Barton for the first try less than two minutes into the game. Dylan Audsley converted for the 7-0 lead. Arizona spent most of the next eight minutes camps out in or near the Saint Mary's 22, but the Gaels held, and then broke out. They got a penalty just inside the halfway line, and Audsley put it over with room to spare for a  10-0 lead. 

Arizona did well to not give up on breaks through their line, and a couple of times got out of trouble y sheer hustle. Arizona had their own chances, including a promising break that semed to have try written all over it, except that Kevin O'Connor did just enough to force a knock-on.

It took about 15 minutes for someone to break through, and it was Saint Mary's. Using their forwards in the backline, they worked the ball nicely, thus avoiding too many rucks, st the platform near the Arizona tryline, and Mike McCarthy capped it off. Audsley was again true on the kick and Saint Mary's led 17-0. The Gaels went right down to the Arizona line right after that, but the Wildcats held.

In the second half, Arizona's Kyle Rogers broke through early, but couldn't link up with his support. As so often happens against Saint Mary's, the Gaels turned the field position around pretty quickly, and nice hands from Holden Yungert to Audsley to Jack Carso made it, with Audsley's conversion, 24-0.

More pressure from Saint Mary's and a stolen scrum put-in allowed Yungert to set up Alejandro Duran. And then a stolen lineout was sent wide, where Aaron Matthews powered through several tacklers to score in the corner.

That made it 36-0, and it was 43-0 after some champagne rugby and a nice pass from Vili Helu created a try for Mike Garrett. Arizona came close to scoring, only to have Audsley hold up Rogers in-goal. Eventually, with time up on the clock, Dante Weeks took off for a long-range try, and Anton Grigoriou converted.

With both teams putting everything they had in their cover defense, there weren't too many breakaway tries. Instead, offenses had to execute on multiple levels. Saint Mary's did, and Arizona couldn't quite connect the dots.

Saint Mary's now advances to their 5th-straight DIA final, having won in both 2014 and 2015. For the 5th-straight time, they will face Life University.