Photo by Jake McNeill: Marshall forward Jack Meier (35) contests a jumpshot by Delano's Jake Schultz during the first half of a prep boys basketball game at Marshall High School on Friday night.

MARSHALL — A late first-half rally gave the Marshall boys basketball team all the breathing room it needed when it hosted the Delano Tigers on Friday. Marshall put together a 20-6 run to surge ahead of Delano and the visitors never came back within single digits as Marshall claimed a 74-55 win. The win gave Marshall its ninth win of the season, tying its win total from last year’s 9-18 campaign.

“I think our energy was really important. We made some plays and our energy level just got up there, so that really helped us,” Marshall guard Alex Franson said. “We’re doing a great job so far, we’ve just got to keep it going, keep these wins stacked and keep working together. That’s all we can do.”

A stretch of 5 unanswered points for Delano gave the visitors a 14-13 lead, their first edge since their first points of the game. Yet, with 11 minutes remaining, Marshall found its groove to surge ahead.

Cooper Mensink started the Tiger rally with a 3-pointer to answer, and then dished an assist to JR Vierstraete to maek the score 18-14 in favor of the Tigers when Delano scored the game’s first timeout.

Coming out of the huddle, Marshall hadn’t lost a drop of its momentum. Jake Schultz knocked down a 3-pointer for the visiting Tigers to make it a 1-point game, but the hometown Tigers responded with a pair of Braxton Koster 3-pointers, broken up by Mensink transition layup through contact, to bring the lead up to 9 points.

Koster went on to finish the game with a team-high 15 points for the Tigers, shooting 4 of 8 from beyond the arc. Franson contributed another 14 points on 5 of 11 shooting while Mensink contributed 11 points while going 5 of 14 from the field.

Mensink tried to find Franson on an alley-oop shortly thereafter, but the ball rattled out of the rim. Still, Josh Leibfried was there for the putback.

Franson said after the game that he had some extra motivation to slam one home after the missed oop. He quickly made up for the play by draining a 3 and an and-1 layup on the subsequent possessions to give Marshall its first double-digit lead of the night, 34-19 with 3:29 remaining in the half.

“I did take a fall, but I had the adrenaline pumping, so it definitely didn’t hurt,” Franson said of his reaction to the dunk, getting fired up with hiss teammates after landing on his back.

As the Tigers continued to roll ahead, Franson continued to make highlight reel plays. He knocked down a 3-pointer and slammed home a ferocious dunk on consecutive possessions in the final minute to bring the Tigers’ lead up to 18 points, and a Koster corner 3 at the buzzer sent Marshall into the locker room with a 46-27 halftime advantage.

Marshall head coach Travis Carroll said he felt his team’s strong defense and ability to get going in transition were key factors in the Tigers’ ability to pull awy before the break. While he said that those aspects of Marshall’s game faltered in the second half, he was glad that it came together as well as it did in the first.

“We didn’t do a good enough job of looking to execute the offense and work together, but it was good to see us have that strong first half because it allowed that tough stretch in the second half, it allowed us to keep the lead and maintain the lead at the end of the game,” Carroll said.

Marshall dominated the paint in the game, finishing with 38 points there to Delano’s 16. Marshall shot 51.3% on 39 2-point attempts to Delano’s 44.4% on 18 attempts.

A big part of the volume discrepancy was Marshall’s ability to crash the boards. The Tigers finished with 13 offensive rebounds to Delano’s 2, and finished with a 39-22 overall rebounding advantage.

Meier and Vierstraete led Marshall on the glass with seven and six total rebounds, while Meier’s three offensive boards tied Jayden Meister for a team-high.

Franson scored the game’s opening points with a layup, but Schultz answered with a 3-pointer for Delano. It was one of only two leads all night for the visiting Tigers, and neither lasted more than a minute.

Jayden Meister responded to Schultz’s go-ahead basket with a second-chance bucket for Marshall, and a Mensink transition layup made it a 3-point game in favor of the Tigers.

Levi Maeyaert hit a free throw and knocked down a layup off a well-placed bounce pass from Mason Graven to extend Marshall’s lead to 13-8 before Delano surged ahead for another short-lived lead.

Delano started out the second half with a 5-0 run but a JR Vierstraete layup and an alley-oop and-1 from Graven to Meister brought Marshall’s lead up to 53-32.

Delano slowly ate into the Tigers’ lead as the second half progressed, eventually hitting a 3-pointer with eight-and-a-half minutes to play to trim the Marshall advantage to 62-49.

A free throw trimmed Marshall’s edge to its thinnest Margin of the second half, 10 points, but Maeyaert answered with a free throw to make Marshall’s lead 66-54 with under five minutes to play. From there, Marshall pulled away to secure the victory and never led the visitors back within striking distance.

“Just learning how to win. Just learning how, in those tough minutes, to have the kids stick together and know that they can work together through a tough situation,” Carroll said when asked what he wanted his team to take away from the second-half lull. “You can have nights like that where you’re going to wish you played a little bit better, but being able to keep that lead… that’s a good sign for the team.”

Marshall generally protected the ball well, finishing with seven turnovers to Delano’s 11. Mensink finished with three steals, while Meister contributed a steal and a block.

After having strung together three consecutive wins, the Marshall basketball team now sits at 9-3 on the season. The Tigers will look to make it four in a row when they host Mankato West (3-8) on Tuesday at 7:15 p.m. West defeated Marshall 88-54 in last year’s Section 2AAA quarterfinals to end the Tigers’ season, but the Scarlets have since graduated much of their roster.

“It felt like last week, we kind of had some tough moments… This week we definitely took strides in the right direction and got that momentum going. We’re in the middle of a tough stretch in our schedule right now, so it’s good to have that positive momentum,” Carroll said, noting upcoming games against Mankato West, New Ulm and Fairmont. “You need to have confidence when you go into these types of games we’re going to be running into. It’s good to build that confidence so we can play against good teams and come out on top.”