Staff photo by Ari Selvey New Ulm’s Mitchell Hopp puts up a shot during a Big South Conference boys basketball game against Marshall Thursday at New Ulm High School.

NEW ULM — How dominant were the No. 10-ranked Marshall Tigers in their Big South Conference boys basketball game Thursday night at New Ulm High School?

Marshall scored more points in the first half than New Ulm did in the game.

The Tigers jumped out to a 52-21 lead at halftime and went on to an 84-43 win over the Eagles.

Cooper Mensink led the Tigers (10-4, 8-1) with 29 points. Alex Franson ended with 13 points.

Levi Hopp led New Ulm (2-11, 0-8) with 10 points. Owen Castleman netted 8.

“Marshall came ready to play tonight and we didn’t,” New Ulm head coach Matt Dennis said. “We dd not match their energy — we turned the ball over (16 times) and they turned those turnovers into buckets. They came out and executed their game plan.”

Marshall came out and took a 12-0 lead off of three New Ulm turnovers before Mitchell Hopp got the Eagles on the board with a 3.

A conventional 3 by Franson and two free throws had the Tigers up 17-3 before a Mitchell Hopp basket made it 17-5.

The Tigers then ran off 10 straight points for a 27-5 lead and that lead grew to 32-8 on an Oliver Voigt basket off of an Eagles turnover.

A Franson 3 later swelled the Tigers lead to 41-12.

Mensink’s third 3 of the first half saw the Tigers running away at 50-19 with one minute to go in the first half.

“Our shoulders and heads were hanging and when you do that it is hard to look up at the next play and make that next play,” Dennis said. “Because you are thinking about that last one.”

Marshall kept the pedal to the metal to start the second half, outscoring New Ulm 16-2 to take a 68-23 lead, with Mensink adding two more 3s to his resume.

Joshua Leibfried’s basket courtesy of another New Ulm turover made it a 74-24 Tigers lead with just under 12 minutes left in the game.

Dennis said that there were a lot of growing moments in the loss.

“We are not where we need to be defensively,” he said. “We are not the defensive team we need to be — we need to be able to turn defense into offense and get out and play faster. We only did that a couple of times tonight against a very fast, quick and athletic team.”

New Ulm does have one day to recharge as it hosts Hutchinson Saturday afternoon a 1:30 p.m. in a nonconference game.

“We have to regroup but more important we need to come together,” Dennis said. “We have to get back to our strengths and if you looked at our schedule two months ago this week was going to be tough.”