Staff photo by Travis Rosenau Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s Abbie Riederer puts up a shot over a host of players during Saturday’s Tomahawk Conference girls’ basketball game with Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart at MVL High School in New Ulm.

NEW ULM — Behind Abbie Riederer’s 44-point effort, the Minnesota Valley Lutheran girls’ basketball team overcame an early 12-point deficit against Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart and snagged an 80-67 win in Tomahawk Conference action on Saturday.

Riederer hit seven 3-pointers in the game and tied her single-game career high in points, finishing a point shy of the MVL girls’ single-game record. She also had three steals.

“She did a great job and she wasn’t forcing anything either,” MVL head coach Rollin Timm said of Riederer. “Once she started making them, she let the girls set her up and give her some nice open looks. When she had those looks, she was able to knock them down. I was very impressed by her overall game. She was not forcing it, she was distributing the ball and getting some other people involved — which is what we’ll need to do — because if everybody keys on her all year, we’re going to hopefully make them pay with the rest of the players on our team as well. And I thought she played one of her better defensive games that she’s played for us.”

Also for the Chargers, Kaylee Hunter had 16 points, two steals and two blocks, while Mia Johnson finished with 10 points. Samantha Dalueg racked up 14 rebounds and three assists also for the Chargers, while Ella Schlei added nine boards and McKenzie Lauwagie had six boards and four assists. Naomi Anderson added three assists and a pair of steals for MVL.

The Mustangs jumped out to a 14-2 lead early on after a 12-0 run was capped off on a bucket inside by Allison Dornseif and 3 at the top of the key by Allison Milbrandt. BLHS created turnovers early on and pushed the pace for easy baskets to take that double-digit lead, but the Chargers stuck with it and got a 3 by Johnson and a step-back 3 by Riederer to cut the deficit to 19-16. That forced a BLHS timeout with 11:02 left in the first half.

MVL continued its run out of the timeout and took a 23-19 lead after a basket in the paint by Dalueg and a 3 and bucket inside by Hunter. Neither team was able to build much of a lead the rest of the half, however, and the Mustangs held a slim 34-33 halftime lead.

“We missed a bunch of shots early in the game, easy ones, and we did have a couple of turnovers that did not help us any,” Timm said. “But we were not too concerned by that. We know we have great depth and I think that’s going to carry us all year. We’ve got eight, nine girls that can come in and play and give us minutes. All the way down the line, we’ve got people that have great attitude and they’ll come in and give us some great effort. And I think that’s what eventually wore [BLHS] down in the second half. And we didn’t have a lot of turnovers in the second half at all. We got a lot of good shots and we took care of the ball.”

MVL opened the second half with back-to-back 3s by Hunter to pull ahead 39-34. The Mustangs got within 2 after that, but that was the closest they got as Riederer continued connecting on 3s to help keep the Chargers ahead.

A 3 by Riederer and a jumper off the glass by Hunter gave MVL its largest lead of the day, 77-59, with minutes to play.

MVL (1-0, 1-0) travels to Cedar Mountain for a Tuesday night conference game next, while BLHS (0-1, 0-1) travels to Sleepy Eye on Jan. 26 for conference action.