Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm’s Joey Wise (4) attacks the basket and draws a foul during a Big South Conference boys basketball game against Worthington on Friday night at New Ulm High School.

NEW ULM — New Ulm Eagles head boys basketball coach Matthew Dennis called it “Chaos Basketball.”

New Ulm forced 29 Worthington turnovers and used that to down the Trojans 74-61 Friday night in a Big South Conference game.

The win avenged an earlier 78-66 road loss to Worthington.

Mitchell Hopp led New Ulm (6-14, 2-10) with 22 points. Zach Hubbard continued his hot scoring with 18, while Levi Hopp ended with 15 and Joey Wise had 10.

Jacari Swinea led the Trojans (3-16, 2-11) with a game-high 26 points.

“This is a huge win for us,” Dennis said. “We were playing aggressive — doing our thing — and we created a lot of chaos tonight. We knew what was on the line and our boys responded.”

The Eagles, who play a nonconference game Monday at Willmar, fell behind the Trojans 8-0 before a Mitchell Hopp basket got the Eagles on the board.

New Ulm erased that 8-0 deficit and took an 11-10 lead.

And the first half was a series of runs by both teams.

Worthington retook the lead at 15-11, but the Eagles regained the lead with a 10-0 run, with Mitchell Hopp, Wise and Levi Hopp getting baskets off of Trojans turnovers.

A Mitchell Hopp basket off of one of 14 first-half Worthington turnovers had the Eagles with a 29-18 lead.

But the Trojans used a late first half run out-scoring the Eagles 15-6 to cut the lead at halftime to 35-33.

“This was a game of runs and we talked at halftime of how proud we were that they were the first team to call a timeout,” Dennis said. “We trust our kids and we told them that. We had to understand what they were trying to do to us and not get rattled. I thought that our boys handled that first [run] really well and battled back.”

New Ulm built their lead to 52-44 on one of 14 second half miscues by the Trojans.

A 3 from Brady Dennis sparked a 7-0 run capped by a Owen Castleman basket off of another Worthington turnover and a 64-48 lead.

“I was proud of the energy that we brought tonight,” Dennis said. “Our boys were on their toes all night long — we executed. We got to the paint a lot — and we really found each other tonight and that is something that we have struggled with all season.

“Tonight we played unselfishly — we did not do that all night long, but we definitely did in the entire second half.”