Staff photo by Steve Muscatello Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s Leyton Brau (23) take a layup after getting past a Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart defender during the second half Tuesday at MVL.

NEW ULM — Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s aggressive defense led to 21 steals and a 69-56 win over Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart on Tuesday night at MVL High School in Tomahawk Conference boys’ basketball action.

BLHS outrebounded MVL 38-37 and hit three more 3-pointers, but the Chargers applied a press for three-quarters of the game and got easy points off of turnovers (19) to counter.

Christian Edwards led the Chargers with 16 points and seven steals off the bench. Kyreis Harrison added 12 points, seven rebounds, five assists, three blocks and a pair of steals for MVL, while Leyton Brau had 12 points and Nick Bleick added 10 points.

BLHS was led by Chase Hubin’s 14 points and seven rebounds. Braden McColley added 9 points for the Mustangs.

Both teams traded leads early in the first half and never led by more than 2 until BLHS got back-to-back buckets to lead 11-8 and force an MVL timeout with 10:28 left in the half. MVL started to press and play up-tempo out of the timeout.

After BLHS tied the game at 18-all on a floater by Nicholas Taylor, MVL went on a 10-0 run to lead 28-18 with 2:56 left in the half. The run was capped off on a fall-away jumper by Harrison near the baseline.

The Chargers carried a 32-22 lead into halftime.

After a Harrison bucket started the scoring in the second half, the Mustangs stormed back with a 7-0 run to cut their deficit to 34-29 and force an MVL timeout with 12:36 left to play. The run saw a basket in the paint by Braden McColley and two buckets by Connor McColley, with the second one being a 3.

MVL ended the run with back-to-back buckets by Edwards to force a BLHS timeout just 20 seconds later. MVL then stretched those buckets into a 10-0 run and a 44-29 lead.

A layup by Edwards with less than five minutes to play gave MVL its largest lead of the night, 65-47.

MVL (8-2, 8-1) is at Cedar Mountain on Friday, while BLHS (1-9, 1-8) hosts New Ulm Cathedral on Thursday.