Jan 17, 2025
Photo by Jake McNeill New Ulm’s McKenna Hulke attempts a layup through traffic during a prep girls basketball game against the Marshall Tigers on Thursday in Marshall.
By Jake McNeill
sports@nujournal.com
MARSHALL — The New Ulm girls basketball team couldn’t overcome the absence of Brooklyn Lewis in its road matchup against top-ranked Marshall on Thursday night. The Tigers jumped out to an early lead and never looked back, defeating the Eagles 80-53 to end New Ulm’s five-game win streak.
“She’s kind of the director on the court,” New Ulm coach Julie Rogers said of Lewis but added that she felt that Maddie Backer filled the role well. “[Backer] did a fabulous job of stepping into her shoes tonight… and it’s not foreign to her. She had to cover 15 games for Brooklyn last year when she broke her hand, and I thought Maddie did a great job. I just can’t give kids as much rest as I would like to give them because we’re down a sub on the bench too.”
Reese Drake scored a game-high 28 points for the top-ranked Marshall Tigers in the win, with 17 of those points coming in the first half. Alongside her, four other Tigers scored in double figures by the break.
“Any time the ball goes in the basket like that, you’re always going to look good and I thought that was the case there,” Marshall head coach Dan Westby said, adding that he believes the 51 first-half points is a season-high for the Tigers. “We had four kids in double figures at halftime, that’s pretty rare… Our kids are really fired up, ready to go, but New Ulm was without a key player tonight, so they’ll be a different team if we meet again.”
The player in question for New Ulm was Brooklyn Lewis. She’s been one of the Eagles’ primary impact players on the offensive end, both with her scoring and ball-handling abilities.
The Tigers’ defense was strong from the opening tip. Even though Marshall’s shots weren’t falling early, its defense held New Ulm scoreless for the first three minutes as they built a 10-0 lead.
Reese Drake scored 6 points during the Tigers’ early run, including one on a transition layup that she set up with a steal. She stayed hot throughout the first half, scoring 17 points before the break as Marshall built a 51-29 lead.
Morgan Hulke ended the drought for New Ulm when she knocked down a 3-pointer and Leah Brustad the deficit to 5 points with a turnaround jumper. Yet, Taleigha Bigler answered with a 3-pointer from about 25 feet out and Paige Gillingham came away with a steal before hitting a layup to bring Marshall’s lead back up to double digits, 15-5.
Bigler was one of four Tigers to finish the first half scoring in double figures. She, Avery Fahl and Avery Schneekloth each headed into the locker room with 10 points, while Hulke led New Ulm with 9 at halftime.
Drake finished the game shooting 9 of 13 from the field and 6 of 8 from beyond the arc. She also dished out a game-high nine assists with two turnovers, while Bigler contributed another eight assists with one turnover.
On the finishing end of those dimes, Bigler scored 14 points on 5 of 12 shooting with a trio of 3s while Fahl and Schneekloth contributed 13 points on 5 of 6 shooting and 12 points on 6 of 9 shooting respectively.
Leading 19-10, Marshall again went on a run when Bigler drained another deep 3-pointer, Schneekloth eurostepped her way to a layup and Drake recovered a loose ball to bring Marshall’s lead to 27-10 when the Eagles called a timeout with 10 minutes remaining in the half. Still, Drake hit another 3 immediately after to extend Marshall’s lead to 20 points.
New Ulm cut Marshall’s lead back down to 17 when a Drake layup got Marshall on the board. Fahl kept the momentum flowing by knocking down a 3 from each corner on back-to-back possessions and a long 2 from Schneekloth in the corner brought Marshall’s lead up to 47-22.
“The thing that I guess is the most pleasing about the whole thing is we had a tough week,” Westby said of his team’s first-half success, noting the Tigers got home late from their road win over Mankato West on Tuesday and that the kids also had final exams this week. “Lot of late nights studying and that sort of thing, so to come out and play a key section team here again tonight, that’s tough to do, but our kids really responded well.”
Schneekloth used some fancy footwork in the post and finished off a dump-in from Drake on consecutive possessions to give Marshall its largest lead of the half, 51-24. Yet, a pair of steals from Brustad and Madeline Backer in the final minute turned into a layup and a free throw for Brustad, cutting Marshall’s lead to 22 points at halftime.
Hulke finished the game with 17 points for New Ulm on 5 of 9 shooting, as well as a trio of trifectas, while Brustad added another 9 points on 4 of 5 shooting.
The Eagles weren’t able to find much more of a rhythm in the second half as Marshall continued to pull away. The Tigers led by as many as 32 points, though they fell shy of the 35-point cushion needed to trigger the running clock. Still, there were some positive takeaways for the team, as Rogers noted she felt her team rebounded better in the second half.
“I’m proud of them for going after it. They never gave up tonight,” Rogers said. “They worked hard, end-line to end-line. We need to do some things differently offensively, and that’s what we’ll be working on the next couple of weeks, but I think that they came out here, gave it their all, and I’m really proud to be their coach.”
New Ulm finished the game even with Marshall on the boards. Each team logged six offensive and 12 defensive rebounds. Hulke and Bigler led their respective teams with two offensive and four defensive rebounds each.
Holding a 32-point lead with four minutes to play, Marshall was once again able to get its depth pieces some varsity experience by sitting its starters.
The Tigers forced 22 turnovers from New Ulm while coughing it up 12 times themselves. Bigler and Gillingham recorded four and three steals respectively for Marshall while Backer had three steals for New Ulm.
The Marshall Tigers remain undefeated with the win, currently sitting at 16-0 on the season. Marshall will look to keep the ball rolling when it hosts Fairmont (9-3) for its next game on Saturday at 1 p.m.
“Fairmont’s been having a good year as well, so our schedule’s been tough,” Westby said, again noting that the Tigers have had a tough week on the schedule. “The hope is that it just makes you battle-hardened for tournament time, so hopefully we can keep it going.”
New Ulm drops to 9-5 with the loss. The Eagles will aim to recapture the momentum they’ve built up over the last month when they travel to Kasson-Mantorville for a game against Byron (11-3) on Saturday at 2:30 p.m.
“We’ll make some adjustments and move forward,” Rogers said. “Every time you play a game, you learn something about yourself, you learn something about your opponents, so we just have to take that knowledge now, go home, and come up with a practice plan tomorrow that addresses some of those things.”
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