Staff photo by Steve Muscatello Martin Luther College’s Jade St. Germaine tries to get a shot off over a Gustavus Adolphus defender during the first half Monday at MLC in New Ulm. For more photos of this event go to cu.nujournal.com

NEW ULM — The Martin Luther College women’s basketball team had its hands full against Gustavus Adolphus College on Monday.

The No. 16-ranked Gustavus handed MLC (1-4) a 78-45 defeat after MLC committed 34 turnovers in the game. There were 21 turnovers in the first half alone by the Knights and it certainly helped the Gusties improve to 3-0 on the year.

MLC coach Dan Gawrisch said that the team’s conditioning needs to improve to prevent those turnovers, but he felt the game was a good opportunity to learn and get stronger.

“Part of it is our conditioning needs to improve,” Gawrisch said. “We have to give our guards help relieving the pressure, then our guards have to do a better job of not dribbling into trouble but dribbling with a plan. They are correctable things and they’re issues that we’ve struggled with against Gustavus, which is an extremely strong and athletic team. They play very intense pressure, more intense than we’re going to see the rest of the season. But it’s going to make us stronger because we know what we have to work on this week in practice.”

The Knights were on the board right away after a bucket under the hoop by Cassandra Anklam, but Gustavus began to create turnovers and led 14-6 after the first quarter of play. The Knights had 13 turnovers in the second quarter and the Gusties took advantage of it, leading 36-16 at the half behind Mikayla Miller’s 10 first-half points.

The Knights picked up offensively in the fourth quarter behind Grace Schultz’s eight-point quarter and put 19 points on the board, their highest-scoring quarter. But the Gusties were too far ahead at that point and left MLC with a win.

Schultz had 20 points for the Knights and five steals, while Jade St. Germaine added four points and seven rebounds.

The Knights shot 30.4 percent in the game and were 0-9 from the 3-point line. Gawrisch said that shooting also needs to improve along with limiting turnovers.

“We have to put in the work to get better,” Gawrisch said. “At this point in the season, we’ve almost played more games than we’ve had practices collectively as a team. [We were] going up against a program that puts in a lot of work and it shows, so we just have to put in more work. “We know we have to get stronger with the ball, we have to come through the pass, we have to give our guards some help,” Gawrisch said. “So those are big takeaways that are going to make us better in the long run. And we have to put the ball through the net when we have opportunities. We were not shooting that well in the first half. (25.9 percent)”

The Knights travel to play Calvin for a 4:30 p.m. game on Friday.