Staff photo by Travis Rosenau
New Ulm High School’s Nate Firle puts up a shot in the paint during a home nonconference boys basketball game with Rocori at NUHS.
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NEW ULM — The New Ulm Eagles boys basketball team saw double-digit leads in the first and second half shrink away against Rocori before New Ulm pulled away for a 78-73 win over the Spartans in a non-conference game at New Ulm High School.
James Osborne led New Ulm (1-0) with 20 points. Colton Benson and Nate Firle each ended with 19 points.
Jack Boos paced Rocori (0-1) with a game-high 31 points.
The Eagles, who play at Jordan Saturday at noon, held leads of 13 points in the first half and 11 points in the second half, saw Rocori cut the lead to 67-61 on a Tyler Prom 3.
But a basket from Firle coupled with two charity tosses from the 6-foot-9 post player and a follow-up bucket gave the Eagles a 73-66 lead.
Rocori pulled to within 73-68 before Ayden Jensen hit four free throws in the final minute to cap the win.
“I feel like I want to be a clutch player,” Firle said. “They can rely on me and I am not a liability.”
New Ulm head coach Matt Dennis said he knew how many athletes Rocori would have to make things tough.
“We knew Rocori is loaded with athletes,” Dennis said. “We saw what they did in the state football tournament. We knew that we were going to get a pretty good shot from them.”
In the first half it looked like New Ulm was going to give Rocori a good shot as they jumped to leads of 15-8 on a conventional 3-point play from Benson and am Osborne jumper.
The Eagles increased their lead to 33-20 on a dunk from Firle and a Benson bucket off of a turnover.
New Ulm’s size inside also led to lead as the Spartans were forced to fire from the outside. They made just two of 13 shots from beyond the arc as Firle patrolled the paint.
“I thought that Nate did a nice job patrolling the lane,” Dennis said. “They had one possession where they ran out of time on the shot clock — he had two blocks on that one possession (finishing with five blocked shots in the game). He did a great job of bothering shots inside.”
But Rocori began to cut into the New Ulm lead in the second half.
Two 3s from Boos shrunk the lead to 46-37.
“They made some nice shots from the outside,” Dennis said. “And we had some guys out of position based on the circumstances of the game.”
But two free throws from Osborne and two charity shots from Easton Clark moved New Ulm to a 57-45 lead.
“But we are happy with the team win,” Dennis said. “I was proud of our boys in how we stepped up against a 3AAA school.”
Osborne crept closer to the 1,000-point club and now needs 10 points to join his brother Charlie. Benson now sits 16 points away from becoming New Ulm High School’s boys basketball all-time career leading scorer and passing Reece Melby’s mark of 1,443.