New Ulm Eagles boys head basketball coach Matt Dennis said that his team played well against a 6-0 Waseca team that has won their games by an average of 30 points a game.

Waseca downed New Ulm 80-64 in a Big South Conference game.

“They are extremely well-coached, they have some fine athletes and even with one of their best athletes [Damarius Russell] gone because he was playing in a high school All-Star football game,” he said. “They are still very athletic. They had one junior on the floor and the rest were seniors and it showed.”

New Ulm started two sophomores, two juniors and a senior.

“I thought that we played really well at times,” Dennis said. “I felt that we came out of the gates in a very impressive manner. We were playing a solid defense and offensively we knocked some shots down and forced a [Waseca] timeout early. We are always proud of that when we can force a team to take a timeout especially when they are the favorite.”

Dennis said that the Eagles were hurt by turnovers in the loss.

“We turned the ball over too much,” he said. “Any time you go down the court and do not get a shot and give them an extra [shot], the math does not add up. We do have the youth that can lead to the turnovers — we are young and learning.

“We talked about that after the game and the players knew that too. They said it and came up with it. We talked about what we learned in the game. They recognize that this is what we need to do to take the next step.”

Dennis said that sophomore Levi Hopp had a good game with 15 points — as did Zach Hubbard.

“He played a nice defensive game and Zach stepped up and got really aggressive offensively,” Dennis said. “And Nick Risen has been steady this season.”

Despite the loss that dropped the Eagles to 0-1 in the conference and 1-3 overall, Dennis thinks that this team is progressing with positive steps.

“We are taking steps forward — we see it every day in practice — we had our best practice of the year before the game,” he said. “And we saw that coming out of the gate so strong. “These players want to learn and they are extremely coachable. That is all you can ask for from a young bunch.”

New Ulm was down 13 points at halftime.

Dennis said that part of the fun of coaching is watching a young team continue to grow.

“That is part of the fun of coaching. It is part of the element of having 10 juniors, sophomores and a freshman on the team playing huge roles, It is a challenge and we have to get better. We play at Fairmont on Tuesday and they have a lot of size and we want our players on what we want to do to take away their size advantage.”

BACKER STEALS

RECORD

New Ulm High School’s Maddie Backer set a school record Friday night for the Eagles girls basketball team when she recorded 15 steals in the Eagles 76-21 win over Waseca.

Backer’s 15 steals is three off of the City of New Ulm girls record of 18 set by Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s Karissa Kramer in 2005.

NEW ULM GIRLS HOCKEY TEAM

BATTLES SCHEDULE

New Ulm High School head girls hockey coach Jeremy Reed said that he knew coming into this season that his young team woud face some adversity.

“I knew that our schedule was tough coming into the year so we are more focused on how e are playing,” Reed said as his girls (2-8, 0-4) prepare to host South Central (5-5) Tuesday at 7 p.m. in a nonconference game at the New Ulm Civic Center.

“If you play a good hockey game and take a loss, sometimes you can get as much out of that as a win,” Reed said. “But I think coming into this season that we were going to have some inconsistencies — we have to strive to be more consistent.”

Reed said that Friday night’s 2-1 loss to River Lakes was one of the Eagles most complete games that they have played this season.

“And we played well against South St. Paul (2-0) loss where we played a complete game,” he said. “Other than that we have had peaks and valleys in games. We look good for a while and play really well for a couple of shifts and then drop off, so we need to be more consistent and some of that could be our youth and development process.”

One of the biggest concerns this season is the lack of goal scoring. The Eagles are averaging 1.4 goals per game but defensively are allowing 1.9 goals per contest.

“We have not scored a lot of goals and we have played teams that do not give up a lot of goals,” he said. “And that may put more pressure on our defense — that may be in the back of their minds. And it was in the back of the girls minds earlier in the year. We had to revamp our defensive core this year, but it is starting to get better and working on it in practice. We want to make a team go 200 feet.”

Reed said that the Eagles made a change in their defensive system prior to their game with Marshall.

“We want to bring more numbers down low in the defensive end.”

He has also tinkered with line changes to try and produce more scoring.

“We have changed some things up during games and the lines that we have now have been together about a week and a half,” Reed said. “And we are liking what we are seeing in some of the puck movement and we are hoping that with a couple of upperclassmen get their first puck in the net that they can scoring.

“And some of our girls are getting frustrated as they are not scoring. Some of the girls are gripping their sticks kind of tight and that frustration is there. And now we are getting more shots on nets in games than what we were earlier in the season. Our last three games we were around 30 [shots on goal]. We are just trying to shoot with purpose and get pucks and bodies to the net. We had gone four games without a goal.