Staff photo by Steve Muscatello Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s Emma Grace Kramer takes a shot as Megan Ahlness (left) and Emma Currans (right) of Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s defend on the play Thursday at MVL.

NEW ULM — Playing against one of the top teams in the Tomahawk Conference, Sleepy Eye St Mary’s wanted to get out to an early lead and extend their lead over third-place Minnesota Valley Lutheran in the conference standings.

The Knights did just that, grabbing leads of 6-0 and 9-2 before cruising to an 81-43 victory over MVL on Thursday night.

The Knights were led by Madison Mathiowetz, who scored 39 points. She also grabbed 15 rebounds, had six assists and four steals. Sydney Windschitl finished with 19 points, five rebounds, six assists and two steals and Reagan Severson had 12 points and five assists.

“MVL attacked the basket, building up some fouls, but our kids played through that, we had a number of them with two fouls in the first half,” St. Mary’s coach Bruce Woitas said. “We gotta learn to play in that situation, but overall, we got a lot of people that can do a lot of things for us and I thought we did a nice job offensively and overall defensively as well.”

Up 9-2 early, the Knights kept their foot on the gas an did a good job against MVL’s top scorer Abbie Riederer, who finished the game with 13 points. Sam Daleug had 12 points and three steals and Rylee Woller hauled in 10 rebounds.

While the Knights defense was suffocating the Chargers, they were able to turn some of those steals into transition baskets on the other end. Later, a 3-pointer from Severson gave the Knights a 23-6 lead.

MVL hit double digits with 5:06 left in the first half after a basket by Ella Schlei and the Chargers trailed 29-10 at that point.

A late basket from Mathiowetz made it 35-15, but the Chargers scored the final five points in the half to make it 35-20 at the break.

St. Mary’s and MVL traded some early punches, with Riederer scoring consecutive baskets to make it 44-30. But the Knights pulled away, going up 60-32 on a 3 from Emma Currans with 10 minutes left in the game.

Windschitl kept the offense going after she scored with 6:25 left to make it 70-41 and the Knights remained unbeaten for the year. They now have five straight games at home to finish the regular season, including a showdown with Waterville-Elysian-Morristown next Friday.

“We have the Waterville nonconference matchup next week, that should be a good test for us, potentially we could see each other again [in the playoffs],” Woitas said. “We gotta be ready for each and every game.”

MVL (9-5, 8-5) hosts Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop on Monday and St. Mary’s (13-0, 12-0) hosts New Ulm Cathedral on Monday.