Photo by Jake McNeill: Marshall's Reese Graven (5) kicks out a pass to the corner while driving into the paint during the Tigers' win over Hill-Murray in Marshall on Saturday afternoon.

MARSHALL — After starting its season with a pair of offensive battles, the Marshall girls basketball team withstood a change of pace in a defensive slog against No. 8 Hill-Murray on Saturday afternoon. While the game remained tight to the end, Marshall led nearly wire-to-wire in the 38-30 win.

“We anticipated it was going to be a tough defensive matchup and they play a lot like we do. The one thing that they did that I felt like really slowed us down was I thought they really defended on the perimeter well and that took us a while to get going in that regard,” Marshall head coach Dan Westby said.

The Pioneers’ brief lead came early in the game. The Tigers looked strong through the first three possessions, forcing Hill-Murry to miss a 3-pointer, coming back down with an easy layup by Reese Drake and then getting another stop on defense. Yet, Hill-Murray locked in defensively and made Marshall use the full shot clock before settling for a miss on each of the next two possessions.

Mya Wilson then put the Pioneers on top, 4-2, with a pair of quick buckets in the paint. That lead was short-lived, however. Reese Graven knocked down a pair of free throws and Morgan Bjella converted on a putback and a layup to give Marshall an 8-4 lead. A layup and 3-pointer by Taleigha Bigler completed a 9-0 run to switch the momentum of the game.

In Marshall’s previous game, a 23-point win over Worthington on Friday night, the Tigers got the bulk of their offense from 16 first-half points by Drake. Saturday’s offensive workload was much more balanced. Bjella led the Tigers with 8 points at the break while Drake and Bigler contributed 6 and 5 respectively.

“Reese Drake got in some early foul trouble so we needed some other kids to put up some of the scoring and they really did a nice job down there. Morgan had a couple of big free throws for us to kind of widen the lead there a little bit… I think that’s really important for our group,” Westby said.

While Marshall wasn’t led by just one player, their scoring was limited to just their starters. Bjella led the way with 11 points on 3-of-6 shooting while Bigler and Drake also added 11 and 9 points respectively. Graven and Kennedy Drake rounded out the Marshall scorers with 6 and 2 points respectively.

Marshall started to get in foul trouble early in the first half, committing four fouls in the first five minutes. Yet, they found a way to limit the unnecessary risks and Hill-Murray didn’t shoot its first 1-and-1 until the final 90 seconds of the half.

Marshall led by as many as 10 points in the game, 19-9, but a late run by the Pioneers cut the lead down to 5 points. Still, a pair of Reese Drake free throws after she was fouled attempting a layup gave Marshall a 21-14 lead going into the locker room.

Wilson was productive for the Pioneers in the first half with 8 points. Yet, the Marshall defense cracked down in the second half to limit her opportunities and held her to 3 second-half points.

“She’s really a skilled player and I thought Reese Graven, she drew the assignment of guarding her and had her most of the night, and I thought Reese did a nice job,” Westby said. “Reese logged a lot of minutes out there but I thought she really defended hard.”

Wilson gave the Pioneers something of a size advantage, finishing with a game-high 11 rebounds. Still, Marshall finished the game with a 31-28 advantage on the glass. Reese Drake and Bigler led the team with seven rebounds each while Bjella added another six. Four of Bjella’s boards came on the offensive glass while Bigler added another three; no other player on either team had more than two.

Outside of just Wilson, the Marshall press smothered everyone. Reese Drake and Bigler were consistently able to make players uncomfortable and cause deflections before they even crossed half-court and Paige Gillingham made it difficult for the Pioneers’ inbounders to find open passing lanes.

Hill-Murray opened the second half by getting fouled on a layup. The Pioneers made the first free throw and got a putback layup after missing the second. Still, it wasn’t until late in the half that they started to eat into the Marshall lead.

The teams were deadlocked at a 31-26 lead for about three scoreless minutes before a Bigler free throw ended the drought. Yet, a 3-point shot by Elise Groppoli cut the Tigers’ lead down to 3 points with four minutes remaining.

Marshall triple-teamed a Pioneer on the inbound with under three minutes remaining but Hill-Murray found an open player with an outlet pass in the paint. The Pioneers missed the layup but got fouled on the putback and made the second of the two free throws, making the score 32-30 with 2:30 remaining.

Marshall was held to 1 point for more than six minutes before a Reese Drake free throw ended the scoring drought with 90 seconds remaining. Trailing 33-30, Hill-Murray had an opportunity to tie the game on the following possession but Bjella came up with a key deflection that led to a Reese Graven layup, putting Marshall up 35-30 with the shot out of play.

“We spent way too much time on the perimeter and really didn’t make a whole lot of progress toward the basket at that point,” Westby said. “Offensively, obviously it’s early, but we’ve got to be more aggressive with the ball going to the basket.”

The Pioneers took one last shot at making a run, but Bjella made a key defensive stop in the paint and, after being fouled following the rebound, drained both free throws to bring the game to its final score of 38-30.

While the game was a defensive battle throughout, both teams valued their possessions. Marshall turned the ball over just 13 times to Hill-Murray’s 16. Wilson led the game with five steals while Bigler, Graven and Kennedy Drake each came away with two.

Both teams shot 24% from the field and each knocked down a pair of 3-pointers. The difference ended up being the free-throw line; Marshall converted 15 of 21 attempts from the charity stripe while Hill-Murray made four of nine.

Marshall (2-1) will next host Mankato West on Tuesday before going on the road to face No. 7 New Ulm on Friday. Three of Marshall’s first five games will have come against ranked opponents, the other being the Tigers’ 70-59 loss to No. 3 Alexandria in the season-opener on Nov. 28.

“If you look at our schedule, the first stretch of games here we have up until Christmas are pretty tough. In a perfect world, you maybe want to win a couple of games where you can work on execution and that sort of thing offensively, but we really don’t have that,” Westby said. “We’ve got to go on the fly here and we’ve got a tough couple of weeks. It was good to see us battle as hard as we did tonight.”