Photo courtesy of Jake McNeill/The Marshall Independent New Ulm players celebrate with Daviney Dreckman (1) after her game-winning shot against Marshall on Friday night in Marshall.

Story by Jake McNeill

Marshall Independent Sports Editor

MARSHALL — After falling shy with a shorthanded roster in the teams’ last matchup, Daviney Dreckman and the New Ulm girls basketball team came up with a series of clutch plays down the stretch to defeat No. 5 Marshall 67-65 on Friday night. The Eagles’ win ends a 14-game winning streak for Marshall, dating back to the Tigers’ season-opener loss to No. 4 Alexandria on Nov. 28.

“New Ulm hasn’t won in Marshall [since 2017] and I’ve been on varsity since eighth grade. This was just a team win and during those last 20 seconds, I just felt like the game wasn’t done,” Dreckman said. “I knew these girls were going to pull through. Maddie [Backer] had an excellent steal at the end there, Kenzie [Enter] had an excellent 3 and it was just, ‘get back on defense, do your job,’ and that’s just what we did.”

Marshall won the teams’ last matchup by a score of 76-56 behind 16 points from Paige Gillingham and 13 from Reese Drake. This time, however, the Eagles were a different team. Brooklyn Lewis and Enter were both out in New Ulm’s last matchup against the Tigers and they came up big in clutch time on Friday. This was the first game all season that New Ulm had its full varsity roster available to play, New Ulm head coach Julie Rogers said.

“We’ve had a kid that got in a car accident earlier this year, Brooklyn Lewis broke her arm and this was her first game back, we’ve had a kid in a boot and we’ve had kids that have had the flu. This was the first night that you saw all 15 athletes here ready to play and this just goes to show when we have everybody how powerful these girls can be,” Rogers said.

Entering the final minutes, Marshall expanded its lead to 8 points, 63-55. New Ulm was forced to start intentionally fouling, but Marshall struggled at the line and the Eagles capitalized. Brooklyn Lewis got the ball rolling with a clutch 3-pointer to make it a 5-point game and after Marshall went 1 of 2 at the charity stripe, Maddie Backer stole the ball and kicked it out to Kenzie Enter on the wing for a 3-pointer to make the score 64-63 with 37 seconds remaining.

“We were trying to think of how do we manage the time and what shots do we want to take,” Rogers said. “I was out of timeouts with a minute to go and we were still down… so these kids are very smart basketball players, they have high basketball IQs. So when I talked through the different scenarios, ‘Okay if we get this, we want this. If we have this, we want this kind of defense,’ they reacted as I expected from a varsity-level team. I’m just really happy for them,” Rogers said.

Marshall again knocked down one free throw to extend its lead to 2 points but, after getting a defensive stop, New Ulm’s inbound defense forced a five-second violation turnover. The Tigers prevented New Ulm from scoring the tying basket, but New Ulm got the ball right back.

Marshall head coach Dan Westby said that he felt like his team did some good things offensively in the second half, but that they relaxed too much down the stretch and the offense stagnated.

In the final 20 seconds, Daviney Dreckman took it upon herself to go out there and win the game. She scored the game-tying basket to knot the score up at 65-65. Marshall got the ball back with 15 seconds and the opportunity to take the last shot for the game-winner. They never got the ball past halfcourt; Dreckman came up with the steal and converted the clutch layup just before the buzzer. With no timeouts left, time expired before Marshall had a chance to answer.

“When you’re up 5 with 53 seconds to go, you should win the game. Part of it, I think, is my fault. We had too many players down there on our end and I think we maybe should have spread things out a little bit more, just too congested down there,” Westby said. “We just didn’t execute. We had a couple of opportunities and just didn’t execute. We don’t have much time to feel sorry for ourselves, we’ve got to get after it again tomorrow.”

Dreckman finished the matchup with a game-high 28 points on 11-of-17 shooting from the field. Her eight rebounds were also shy only of Reese Drake’s 10. On the defensive end, she finished with two steals and was one of two players with a block in the game, the other being Reese Graven.

“To see [Dreckman] playing this level of basketball and leading by example… Her defense tonight was incredible, she was all over the court. Offensively, making the layups, defensively grabbing the rebounds, and she was playing with four fouls there at the end so she was going hard,” Rogers said of Dreckman, a University of Jamestown basketball commit. “That’s what I expect out of an athlete that’s my captain… this is exactly where she should be, so I’m just really proud of her. But if you saw her in practice, you would also expect this level of play because this is Daviney Dreckman.”

New Ulm cut into the Marshall lead rapidly in the first half’s waning minutes. Dreckman hit a 3-pointer with under two minutes to play to cut the deficit to 5 points. Neither team scored for the remainder of the half and Marshall went into the locker room with a 35-30 advantage.

Reese Drake started the second half off on a high note with a 3-pointer from the top of the key on the first possession of the half. From there, however, Morgan Hulke and Lewis slashed to the rim on consecutive possessions for the Eagles to make it a 4-point game.

New Ulm’s defense appeared to have Marshall stymied on the opposite end of the court but, after 34 seconds of tenacious defense, Reese Drake drilled a heartbreaking 3 as the shot clock sounded to extend Marshall’s lead. Yet, Lewis matched Drake with a 3 of her own from the wing and consecutive layups from Dreckman and Lewis tied the game at 41-41. Backer then made the go-ahead layup off a Marshall turnover with 12:46 to play.

Reese Drake led Marshall on the night with 23 points on 8-of-14 shooting. She also finished of 8 from 3-point range; Hulke was the only other player to make multiple 3-pointers in the game, going 2 of 5.

Halla Casavan hit a pair of free throws for Marshall but Dreckman responded with a pair of her own to keep the Eagles in control. Yet, Reese Drake tied the game back up with a floater and Gillingham made a stop on the defensive end. The Tigers turned that defense into offense, with Graven driving to the rim in transition before dishing it to Casavan in the low post to put Marshall on top. Graven then made a baseline jumper to give Marshall a 49-45 lead with under 10 minutes remaining.

Wilson responded with a layup for New Ulm but Reese Drake hit a 3-pointer from the wing and Kennedy Drake knocked down a second-chance 3 from the corner to give Marshall a 55-47 lead. She finished the night tied with Gillingham as the Tigers’ second-leading scorer with 11 points. Bigler also added another 9.

The Tigers’ lead wouldn’t remain intact for long. Dreckman again responded with consecutive layups, the first of which was an and-one, to make it a 3-point game. Yet, Gillingham and Taleigha Bigler each converted a shot and a free throw and Kennedy Drake converted on a transition pass from Graven to set up Marshall’s 8-point lead down the stretch.

The Eagles started the game hot. Lewis capitalized on an outlet pass for a fastbreak layup, Backer nailed a 3-pointer and Dreckman converted a putback basket to give the Eagles a 7-0 lead right out of the gate. Lewis finished the night with 11 points while tying Dreckman, Backer and Enter with a pair of steals on the defensive end.

Not ready to let Marshall fall behind early, Kennedy Drake scored 6 unanswered points of her own to make it a 1-point game. Dreckman eurostepped her way to another pair of New Ulm points but Bigler came back with a Marshall bucket in the paint, stole the ball on the fullcourt press to set up a go-ahead putback basket for Morgan Bjella and Reese Drake drained a 3-pointer.

Bigler stole the ball six times on the defensive end of the court while Reese Drake finished with another three steals. Graven led the Tigers with four turnover-free assists on the night while Drake added another three assists.

After New Ulm called a timeout, Bigler hit a baseline midrange jumper capped off a 15-2 Marshall run before a pair of 3-pointers from Morgan Hulke tied the game right back up. On the defensive end, Dreckman blocked a shot to set up Backer’s go-ahead basket with 12 minutes to play in the first half.

Reese Drake took the game into her own hands from there. After missing a corner 3, she grabbed her own rebound for the putback basket to tie up the game. Paige Gillingham grabbed an offensive rebound on the next trip down the floor to set up a Drake 3-pointer from the top of the key and Drake stole the following inbound pass and made the layup to make the score 22-17. From there, Halla Casavan and Gillingham each hit a shot to cap off an 11-0 Tiger run.

Dreckman put New Ulm back on the board with a turnaround layup with eight minutes left in the half. The Eagles held the Tigers scoreless for three minutes but New Ulm was only able to score one basket, courtesy of Riley Wilson, to cut the deficit to 5 points.

With four minutes remaining, Bigler ended the drought with a 3-pointer and Gillingham hit jump shots on consecutive possessions to make the score 33-21, the largest lead of the game. Dreckman interrupted the run with a basket of her own but Gillingham came back with another jumper to keep Marshall’s lead intact.

Prior to a win over Worthington on Tuesday, in which Hulke entered the 1,000-point club with a 22-point outing and Backer added another 20 points, New Ulm had been on a four-game losing streak. Yet, they were facing a tough schedule; three of their opponents were ranked in the top 10 (No. 8 Byron, No. 6 St. Peter and No. 3 Delano). The win over No. 5 Marshall completes the gauntlet and sends New Ulm (13-6) off to Mankato West (7-10) with momentum ahead of its matchup today at 6:30 p.m.

With the loss, Marshall falls to 14-2 on the season. With its 14-game win streak in the books, the Tigers will look to start another one when they host Fairmont (10-8) today at 3 p.m.

“[New Ulm] played hard,” Westby said. “They certainly could have, I won’t say pack it in, but they could have backed off a little bit. But they stayed aggressive and that’s evident by those last couple of plays. That was a disappointing game that we felt like we should have won… but we don’t have a lot of time. We’ve got another game tomorrow afternoon, so less than 24 hours to get ready for next time. We’re going to have to be ready to go.”