Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm’s Brooklyn Lewis tries to pass the ball while guarded by Wayzata’s Kaja Nash during a nonconference season opening girls basketball game at New Ulm High School on Thursday.

NEW ULM — The New Ulm Eagles had to expect that they would have their hands full to open the 2024-25 season of girls basketball Thursday as they hosted the Class AAAA Wayzata Trojans.

What they didn’t expect was quite how well the Trojans would limit the way the Eagles wanted to play their game.

With four players in double figures, the Trojans ran away with an 88-43 win at New Ulm High School.

Sophie Hawkinson led the Trojans with 17 points, while Kaja Nash added 13 points, Elli Howard had 11 and Katie Kelzenberg had 10 points.

Brooklyn Lewis led New Ulm with 10 point and four rebounds, while Maddie Backer had 9 points, Betsy Joyce had 6 points and Riley Wilson had five rebounds.

What Eagles head coach Julie Rogers has wanted from her players over her past four years as head coach at New Ulm is an aggressive and disruptive defense that can create turnovers and feed into an up-tempo offense.

One team on Thursday played that style to a T. Unfortunately for New Ulm, it was the Trojans.

The Trojans, who finished last season ranked sixth in Class AAAA with a 20-8 record, let very few New Ulm mistakes go unpunished Thursday and started the game with a full-court trap.

When the Eagles did slither around the press, their offense slowed down and struggled to get into rhythm, which also led to turnovers.

“We’ve been working on passing. It’s all about if you can catch a pass clean, you can get your shot off,” Rogers said. “But if a pass gets tipped and then you get it, the defense has caught up. So, we have to continue to work on hitting the girl in the right place at the right time so she can catch and shoot it. That pass looks different when there’s a 6-foot girl guarding you than when there’s a 5-7 girl guarding you. So, we’ve got to adjust our passing accordingly and that was maybe a weakness for us tonight.”

After the Trojans scored first on a layup by Allie Berns, a 3 by Backer got the Eagles in front 3-2. The Trojans allowed the Eagles little time to celebrate, however, pushing the ball down the court and finishing with an and-one by Kieser to take the lead back.

That and-one ignited an 11-0 Trojans run that was littered with New Ulm turnovers, giving the Trojans a 13-3 lead in the opening minutes.

Lewis broke the run with a fast-break layup, but there wasn’t much fast-breaking the Eagles could pull off effectively.

After a pair of free throws by eighth-grade forward Leah Brustad had the Eagles down 14-7, the Eagles had a scoring drought of almost six minutes as the Trojans jumped ahead 27-7. A 3 by Backer ended the drought, but the Eagles continued to fall behind more and trailed 47-15 at the half.

The Trojans never seemed to let the Eagles celebrate any positive gain throughout the game and always seemed to have an answer. After a 3 by Backer early in the second half, the Trojans responded seconds later with a 3 of their own by Kieser.

The Eagles did improve offensively in the second half, but the Trojans continued their offensive output and increased their 3-point attempts.

“We thought the first half, we were doing a decent job defensively,” Rogers said. “Switching on the screens or communicating or covering down, making sure we had people coming out. I think at halftime, they had only made three outside shots, everything else was underneath where we have a height disadvantage. … But offensively, I think at halftime we only had 15 points. And we were like, ‘We need to turn it around, we need to score twice as many as that.’ So, that was kind of our goal in the second half was to produce more offensively.”

While a loss to open the season is never fun, Rogers said it was a good opponent to start the new season against and a good test.

“We talked all this year that we have to play challenging teams because that’s how we’re going to get better,” Rogers said. “If you look at our schedule, it’s a pretty challenging schedule. We’re up for it. We’re looking forward to some of these tough opponents. They’re a big school, they’re a AAAA school, if you look at their height, they’ve got a lot of height that we don’t have. But I was really proud of our kids tonight, they didn’t back down, they went after it.”

The Eagles (0-1) are at Orono on Tuesday for another nonconference game.