Staff photo by Travis Rosenau Martin Luther College’s Grace Kieselhorst goes up for a shot while defended by North Central’s Piper Flemming (15) and Magdalenda Daukaus (30) in a UMAC women’s basketball game at MLC on Wednesday night.

NEW ULM — As the Martin Luther College women’s basketball team keeps winning, more and more attention will be put on the Knights to perform at a high level and win.

Despite allowing North Central to cut a 17-point lead in the third quarter down to 9 early in the fourth, the Knights never trailed and did enough in key spots to pull away with a comfortable 69-50 win in an Upper Midwest Athletic Conference women’s basketball game.

The win moved MLC to 13-5 overall and 6-1 in the UMAC. Win No. 13 ties the most wins for the MLC women since the 2015-16 season.

The Knights are also still undefeated at home this season in nine games.

The Rams fell to 3-15 overall and 2-5 in the UMAC with the loss.

MLC had a balanced effort all around as Emma Dorn had 15 points and eight rebounds, Grace Kieselhorst had 15 points, four rebounds and four steals and Ava Stein had 11 points and five rebounds. Mya Morris added 10 points also for MLC, while Lydia Feidt had 7 points and seven rebounds and Lauren Paulsen had 5 points and eight rebounds.

The Rams’ 6-2 senior forward Kaitlyn VanderPloeg led the way for her team with 17 points and eight rebounds.

MLC, despite never trailing in the game, got the first points of the game two-and-a-half minutes in on a jumper from Paulsen. After VanderPloeg tied it with a jumper of her own on the Ram’s next trip down the floor, MLC went on a 7-0 run to lead 9-2. Despite that lead, the Rams cut their deficit down to 11-8 late in the first quarter and trailed just 13-8 after the opening period.

“First of all, North Central is a dangerous team,” MLC head coach Dan Gawrisch said. “They have the size inside and they can get the ball to the rim that way. They have the drivers, they have the shooters outside. The shots weren’t falling as well as they typically do in the first quarter, but we knew, especially once we got up, we just lock it up defensively and stay on the rebounding effort, we can stay in control, and we did.”

The Knights increased their lead in the second quarter to 34-17 after Grace Kieselhorst buried a 3 and a jumper, but the Rams ended the half with a little momentum and trailed 34-22 at the half.

The Knights took a 17-point lead again in the third, 48-31, after a 6-0 run that featured a 3 by Stein, a jumper by Anna Kieselhorst and a free throw by Dorn. However, the Rams again ended the third quarter strong, getting a bucket in the paint from VanderPloeg before the buzzer to trail 51-38 after three.

The Rams cut their deficit to 51-42 early in the fourth quarter on free throws from Brycelyn Brewster before a 10-0 run gave MLC its largest lead of the night at 61-42. The Rams chipped that lead back down to 11 with less than five minutes to play, but MLC had enough late defensive stops and took care of the ball to increase its lead again and run away with the win.

“We only had six turnovers, so we took care of the ball phenomenally,” Gawrisch said. “They pressed us for 40 minutes and sometimes we got right into transition spacing and other times we were able to set up some offensive looks that we wanted to get the ball to the rim and we did that. And points off turnovers was I think the biggest factor if you look at it. We were efficient on offense with those turnovers that we got, we forced only 10, sometimes we have more. But that was kind of our plan, pack it in and take away the driving lanes and take away the post-up efforts as best we can with the team effort.”

The Knights scored 12 points off turnovers while the Rams had just a point off of six MLC turnovers.

MLC now travels to St. Paul for a Saturday evening game against Northwestern before returning home to host the Bethany Lutheran College Vikings in a 7:15 p.m. game Wednesday. The Knights beat Northwestern 72-68 in overtime on Jan. 15 and then had their only conference loss this season in Mankato to the Vikings on Jan. 22.