Staff photo by Travis Rosenau Springfield’s Madden Lendt (4) goes up for a shot ahead of New Ulm Cathedral’s Rylan Koopmann (12) on Tuesday in a Tomahawk-Valley Conference, Tomahawk Division boys basketball game at Cathedral High School.

NEW ULM — Against a New Ulm Cathedral Greyhounds team that prides itself on tough defense, the Springfield Tigers showed off their own defensive muscle Tuesday night.

The Tigers also got out running in the second half on the way to a 76-49 win in a Tomahawk Division boys basketball game.

The Tigers were led by Brayden Sturm’s 22 points, eight rebounds, four assists and three steals, while Brecken Heiling had 16 points and six rebounds. Parker Kuehn added 12 points and six rebounds for Springfield, while Dylan Simonson had 8 points and Bryan Buerkle had 7 points, eight rebounds and four assists.

The Greyhounds were led by Jake Finstad’s 14 points, while Jack Edwards had 9 points, Joe Gillis had 6 points, seven rebounds and four assists and Colin Anderson had 6 points.

While Springfield head coach Lance Larson said he didn’t like his team’s shot selection as much in the first half, he thought his team improved overall offensively as the game went on and was proud of his players’ defense.

“I think our defensive intensity has gotten better and better,” Larson said. “We came out in the first half and held them to 17 points … that was good. Obviously as the game goes on, more guys get in, that changes a little bit. I think that’s something that’s consistently been better. Rebounding’s been OK, I don’t know that we’ve been outrebounded by a team yet this year. As a team, we do that pretty well.”

The Tigers outrebounded Cathedral 40-19.

Springfield slowly grew its lead to 20-7 in the first half after a bucket inside by Sturm before Finstad connected on a 3. Sturm answered back with a 3 of his own as both teams started to pick up the pace offensively late in the half. Springfield won the late first-half point exchange, however, as it closed the half on a 7-2 run, getting a layup seconds before the buzzer by Heiling to lead 34-17 at the break.

A pair of Sturm free throws opened the second half before Heiling connected on a 3 and another fast-break layup by Sturm gave Springfield a 41-17 lead and forced a Cathedral timeout.

Being able to jump out and get some quick points in transition to start the second half was just what the Tigers were looking for.

“I think it made us all feel a little bit more comfortable,” Heiling said. “It made us get to our normal self. We were OK playing the first half, we were content, but we’d rather play the second half, so we picked up the ball pressure and [it] turned into a fun game.”

Back-to-back layups on the fast break by Heiling and Buerkle had the Tigers up 45-19. The Greyhounds cut into that lead and trailed 48-30 after Finstad stripped a layup attempt by Sturm and turned it into a layup of his own on the other end of the court. Both teams traded buckets after that before Finstad fouled out with 3:26 left to play, prompting several substitutions to be made. The Tigers took their largest lead of the night on the first of two buckets inside from senior Jaden Walter.

“I think the biggest factor to limiting a team that likes to get in transition is to take quality shots offensively,” Greyhounds head coach Alan Woitas said. “When you take rushed shots offensively, that leads to transition offense for the other team and they were able to do that in the second half. We took a couple quick shots that we could have got later on in the shot clock. … Overall I thought we competed really well on the defensive end, we didn’t turn the ball over a ton and those are things you have to do to beat good teams.”

Larson said that his team, which moved to 11-1 overall and 7-1 in the conference, still has work to do despite its hot start to the season.

“I think for where we’re at right now, we talk pretty consistently about being able to execute, being able to run stuff, having some discipline in our shot selection, which I think is not very good,” Larson said. “We’ll have a really good film session [Wednesday] and hopefully that will be shown to them a little bit and we’ll see what happens.”

Springfield hosts Westbrook-Walnut Grove on Saturday.

The Greyhounds, who have dropped three games in a row and now sit 4-6 overall and 4-3 in the Tomahawk, are at Sleepy Eye on Tuesday night.