Staff photo by Steve Muscatello New Ulm’s Olivia Wick (15) takes a shot as Taylor Perschau of Sibley East defends on the play during the second half Tuesday at New Ulm High School. For more photos of this event go to cu.nujournal.com

NEW ULM — The New Ulm girls’ basketball team used a 19-7 run to start the second half and opened the 2017-18 season with a 74-38 win over Sibley East Tuesday night in non-conference girls’ basketball.

Joey Batt paced the Eagles with a game-high 27 points. Lizzie Shaul added 10 points.

McKenzie Latzke paced the Wolverines with nine points.

“I was really nervous before the game,” said Eagles’ Brian Batt who was coaching his first game as head coach. “We played fast and we need to cut down on our fouls but I was pretty happy with the game — almost everyone scored in the game for us.”

Nine of the 10 players on the roster scored in the game for the Eagles.

As far as the nervousness, that probably quickly faded as New Ulm jumped out to a 17-4 lead as Batt netted 11 of her points in that stretch.

A basket from Olivia Wick and a jumper from Carli Botten had the Eagles ahead by 13 points.

Despite that double-digit lead, Batt said that there were some hiccups for his team.

“We had some jitters in the first half,” coach Batt said. “We had some communication issues because we switch defenses a lot.”

Sibley East made their best run of the game midway through the first half when they cut into that 17-4 lead and pulled to within 17-11 thanks to two baskets from Morgan Stearms who was forced to leave the game at the 8:37 mark in the first half with an apparent sprained ankle and did not return.

Batt sparked run late in the first half that let New Ulm hold a 28-14 lead before Shaul drained a 3-pointer and then followed that up with a basket for a 33-16 halftime lead.

“We figured out our communication problems in the second half,” Batt said.

That led to that 19-7 run by New Ulm as the Eagles forced six turnovers in that span.

The Eagles upped their lead to 64-31 on baskets from Ellie Bute and Batt with just over six minutes left in the game.

“We played them in our first game last year and we had a good team last year and we really struggled,” Batt said. “We shook the rust off tonight. We have some girls who were on the C-squad last year that are playing varsity this year.”