Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm’s Nathan Firle finishes an alley-oop pass with a bucket during a Big South Conference boys basketball game against Fairmont on Tuesday at New Ulm High School.

NEW ULM — It took an improved shooting performance and defensive effort in the second half to hold off Fairmont Tuesday night, but the New Ulm Eagles got the job done.

Holding a slim 1-point lead at halftime, the Eagles did enough in the second half to defeat the Cardinals 71-63 in a Big South Conference boys basketball game at New Ulm High School.

Colton Benson, who had 13 of New Ulm’s 29 first-half points, saw his shot fall more in the second half as he finished with 30 points and six total 3s. Nathan Firle added 14 points for New Ulm, while Will Fossen had 10 points and Collin Horning added 9.

Fairmont was led by Gavin Junkmeier’s 12 points, while Levi Pooley and Blaze Geiger each had 11 points.

With less than two minutes to play and leading 64-56 after a putback bucket by Firle, Horning stole the ball and converted a layup to give New Ulm a double-digit lead. A Pooley 3-pointer had Fairmont down 66-59 with 1:06 to play.

Horning made another nice play moments later after inbounding the ball off the back of a Fairmont defender before recovering it and finding Firle under the hoop for a basket and a 68-59 lead. Fairmont cut the lead to 68-61, but the Eagles went up 71-61 after a free throw from Benson and a James Osborne alley-oop pass to Firle in transition. Fairmont’s David Maakestad beat the buzzer in the paint on the other end to cap off the scoring.

This was Fairmont’s first game of the season after having this past Friday’s game with Waseca postponed, but the Cardinals certainly didn’t play like it, much to the surprise of New Ulm.

“I was not expecting for them to come out and play as hard as they did at all,” Horning said. “Being we all knew it was their first game, I think we took that a little the wrong way. They definitely came out stronger than we thought and came and kicked us in the butt a little bit, but we came out [in the second half] knowing we needed to play stronger, realizing we needed to keep shooting. Our shots weren’t falling in the first half, but we couldn’t do anything about that, so we just needed to keep shooting the ball and play stronger defense and that’s what won us the game.”

As Fairmont applied a zone defense and New Ulm struggled to get shots to drop, especially from beyond the arc, the Cardinals utilized that to grab a 17-13 lead. But that lead was the largest lead Fairmont ended up getting as New Ulm tied it on a pair of free throws each from Benson and Fossen.

In what was a sign of things to come for New Ulm in the second half, a 3 by Benson closed out the scoring in the first half with the Eagles up 29-28.

“The beauty of that 1-point lead was that we shot horribly, and we were up 1,” Eagles head coach Matt Dennis said. “So that gives us confidence to know that we’re a good shooting team — we know that, we believe in ourselves. And like we said in the locker room, ‘Shooters shoot. So when you’re open, shoot it.’ And I think we saw that in the second half.”

New Ulm made its first seven 3-pointers of the second half, getting four of them from Benson. A 3 by Osborne put the Eagles up 56-43, New Ulm’s largest lead of the night. Fairmont stuck around and cut the deficit to 60-55, but the Eagles did enough in the closing minutes to hold on.

With coach Dennis’ confidence that the team would find its shooting stroke in the second half, Horning said the biggest part of securing the win came down to defense.

“That was the most important part, we had to take away their baskets,” Horning said. “We were leading at the end of the first half, and the most important thing was them not scoring the ball. And we gave all our effort out on defense — communication was super big — and we just needed to stop them from scoring.”

Dennis gave credit to Fairmont and was overall happy with his team’s ability to work through some trouble.

“We had some empty possessions where we missed a shot or turned the ball over, but credit Fairmont,” Dennis said. “They’re scrappy, they came out with a game plan and they executed for the most part, but I think we held on. I think we persevered as a team and worked our way through it.”

New Ulm (3-0, 2-0) hosts Marshall on Friday night.