The Eagles ended up using that approach to take down the Cardinals 78-67 in a Big South Conference crossover boys basketball game.

While the Cardinals (3-18) made 10 shots from beyond the arc to the Eagles’ (10-9) four, New Ulm didn’t need to rely on its long-range shooting as it made up for it in other ways.

“We knew that they were shooters,” Eagles head coach Michael Poncelet said. “The plan was to get out in passing lanes, get deflections, create offense that way. If they were able to get it through, then we were supposed to close out hard. That’s the part we weren’t doing very well. We just weren’t closing out to their shooters, but you can watch one of their games and know they’ve got five, six, seven guys that can shoot. We watched the JV, they had got guys knocking down 3s. So that’s something their program does really well.”

Zach Hubbard led four Eagles in double figures with a game-high 21 points, while Levi Hopp had 17 points, Mitchell Hopp had 15 and Owen Castleman added 12.

Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm’s Owen Castleman (0) backs into the post Monday night during a Big South Conference crossover boys basketball game against Redwood Valley at New Ulm High School.

The Cardinals were led by Zach Lundeen’s 20 points, who hit five 3s in the game.

Owen Castleman ended up scoring the first 7 points of the night for New Ulm, his first bucket coming inside the paint and his last coming from the 3-point line. The Eagles pushed their early lead to 13-4 following a bucket inside by Hubbard, a Levi Hopp jumper and a Levi Hopp-to-Mitchell Hopp fast-break layup, forcing a Redwood Valley timeout with 12:41 left in the half.

New Ulm got out and running thanks to creating turnovers minutes later, going on a 12-0 run to lead 27-9. The run saw Mitchell Hopp throw an alley-oop pass to his brother, Levi Hopp, who had an unconventional finish with a dunk that hit off the back of the rim but bounced in.

Joey Wise also connected on a fast-break pass to Lendale Dunmars for a layup during the run.

The run ended with a Wise pass to Hubbard for a layup and 29-9 lead, the largest lead of the half.

“We want to have paint touches,” Poncelet said. “You look at the first play of the game, Owen posts up and we dump it down to Owen for the easy bucket, and we were able to get stuff around the rim. I always want paint first, work our way out from there.”

The Cardinals hung around thanks to their 3-point shooting, especially off the hand of Lundeen, who hit four in the first half alone. The Cardinals cut their deficit to 45-31 at halftime.

The Cardinals continued hitting 3s early in the second half, getting one from Lundeen and one from Dylan Anderson, who finished with 14 points. After Anderson’s 3, he drove inside for 2 to make it a 49-39 game. After trading buckets, Poncelet took a timeout with 15:10 left in the game to get his players back on track.

Levi Hopp was forced to sit moments later after picking up his fourth foul of the night, bringing Miles Castleman onto the floor for New Ulm. Anderson hit another 3 after that to cut the Cardinal deficit to 55-47, but Owen Castleman answered with a 3 of his own. After free throws by Miles Castleman, he buried a 3 for a 63-49 New Ulm lead.

The Eagles pushed their lead back to 68-50 following a drive inside by Noah Mertz and a 3 by Mitchell Hopp, but the Cardinals cut the deficit down to 13, 70-57, after a 3 from Jayden Crawford.

An 8-1 run had the Eagles back up by 20, 78-58, for the second time of the night. That tied the largest lead of the night for them, and it came after Owen Castleman stole the ball and missed on a contested layup that was grabbed in the air by Hubbard for a quick putback.

The last three minutes weren’t pretty for the Eagles, who saw the Cardinals score the final 9 points in the game for the final score, but the Eagles did enough all-around to hang on.

Without the Eagles’ defensive efforts to disrupt passing lanes and turn turnovers into points, however, things could have gone much worse for them on the night.

“That’s the one part of our defense I was happy with, the way that were able to create turnovers, because that created a lot of offense,” Poncelet said. “Our shots haven’t been falling the best in the half court lately, but when we see them go through like that, then we kind of get going and we hit some jump shots, too, so it all starts with the deflections, the transition, the turnovers.”

New Ulm hosts Fairmont on Friday night in a Big South Conference crossover game.