NEW ULM — The Minnesota Valley Lutheran girls’ basketball team came up just short against West Lutheran on Saturday after a late 15-0 run.

The Chargers fell 47-44 in the MLC Tip-Off Tournament and fall to 2-4 on the season.

The MVL run began with less than six minutes to play in the game after West Lutheran led 47-29. After an MVL free throw, West Lutheran took a timeout with 5:38 to play. Out of the timeout is when MVL came to life and forced several key turnovers with a full-court press. Lauren Paulsen put in back-to-back buckets for the Chargers, Hannah Marzinske got a shot to fall inside and Abby Nelson buried a 3 to trim the deficit to 47-39 and force another Warriors’ timeout.

With 30.8 seconds to play, Maddie Spurgin sank two free throws to bring the MVL deficit to 47-43. Haley Birkholz then stole the ball after the West Lutheran inbounds pass and was fouled, which sent her to the line for double-bonus free throws.

Birkholz connected on one free throw to make the score 47-44. Despite six missed bonus free throws by the Warriors in the last 30 seconds, the Chargers were unable to get a game-tying 3 to fall.

Even in defeat, MVL coach Rollin Timm was much happier with his team’s performance in their second game of the tournament. He was impressed with the late turnaround and said that is what he wants to see more of.

“It was what we’ve been looking for,” Timm said. “We finally realized we could go inside and Lauren [Paulsen] and Emma [Nelson] and Sarah [Dinse] responded by stepping up like we knew they could. We kept talking about the fact that we’ve gotta get the ball inside more — and once we started doing that — the game turned around for us. And of course, when we were able to put a press on them, that flustered them a little bit, too.”

MVL started things out nicely with a 6-3 lead on a Paulsen bounce pass inside to Dinse for 2. Lisa Hoffer, however, knocked down a 3 for the Warriors to tie things up at 6.

Hoffer led the Warriors with a 22-point, 10-rebound game.

A jumper from Maddie Pearson put the Chargers up 11-10, which forced West Lutheran to burn a timeout with 9:05 left in the first half. The Warriors then went on a 15-0 run out of the timeout to lead 25-11.

A Pearson jumper stopped the West Lutheran run and made the score 25-13. MVL found itself down 31-16 at the half.

MVL started the second half off nicely with a put-back bucket by Paulsen and a 3-pointer by Spurgin to cut the deficit to 31-21. West Lutheran then built its lead back up to 18, though, before MVL was able to go on its late run that came up 3 points short.

Paulsen had a double-double for MVL with 11 points and 11 rebounds, while Spurgin added 14 points and two steals. Birkholz added five assists, three steals and a block for MVL.

Timm said that his girls need to continue to work the ball inside so that it will open up the outside shots. He said that will be a main focus when it comes to getting back into the win column.

MVL travels to Sleepy Eye for a Tomahawk Conference game on Tuesday night.