Photo by Ari Selvey: Martin County West’s Mirta Gracia (right) runs the floor while defended by Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop’s Kelby Bruns (left) during a nonconference girls basketball game Monday at GFW High School in Winthrop.

WINTHROP — In a battle between two defensive-minded teams, it’s no surprise that points were hard to come by in Monday’s nonconference girls basketball game between Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop and Martin County West. However, it was MCW that was able to hold out the longest, coming away with a 44-33 win.

“Our defense has to lead us,” MCW head coach Cliff Anderson said. “If we’re going to be successful this year, our defense has to be number one, and our defense was pretty decent tonight. Our offense was pretty ugly, we missed a lot of free throws, but it’s the first game on the road, so hopefully we can build on this and go from there.”

MCW’s Ida Rohman led all scorers with 13 points, while Ivy Olson had 10 points. Courtney Anderson added 7 points for the Mavericks.

For GFW, Keyden Buboltz had 9 points, while Taylor Bauer had 8 points. Kelby Bruns added 6 points.

“Martin County West is always pretty organized defensively,” GFW head coach Rich Busse said. “Cliff, you know what you’re going to get with him, his matchup zone. Change things up out of it a little bit and always keep you off-balance. We knew that. You’re never going to go and score a ton of points against this team because he’s always got them very organized. That was about what we expected, I expected a game in the 40s, considering how we score the ball and the type of defense they play. I was hoping we could keep them around 40 and give ourselves a chance. Had we made a few more free throws, I think it would have been a tighter game down the stretch.”

Missed free throws plagued both teams in the first half, as they combined for 19 missed shots from the charity stripe before the buzzer.

GFW took a 4-1 lead early thanks to layups from Buboltz and Bauer. However, a mid-range jumper from Olson and a transition layup from Courtney Anderson gave the Mavericks the lead. The Firebirds went back up 12-9 on a 3-pointer from Bauer, but MCW went on a 9-1 run, capped off by a 3-pointer from Taylor Hughes, to go up 18-13. A buzzer-beating putback by MCW’s Mirta Gracia gave the Mavericks a 21-15 lead going into halftime.

Despite the low scoring, MCW continued to work the offense, slowing down and taking better shots as the game wore on.

“We just had to keep telling them to focus and be patient on offense a little bit,” coach Anderson said. “We were rushing some shots early, and when they’re not going in, you get more frustrated. But once we settled down in the second half, we made better decisions and took more high-quality shots.”

GFW started the second half with a 5-0 run with a 3-pointer from Kinley Bruns and a transition layup from Kelby Bruns to cut the lead to 21-20, but MCW struck back with a free throw from Emily Schettler and a 3-pointer from Rohman to make it a 25-20 game. GFW kept it close, with Buboltz making a layup to put the score at 27-25, but MCW went on a 9-2 run, bookended by layups from Rohman, to go up 36-27. GFW’s Kelly Willegal made a 3-pointer to make it a two-score game, but MCW closed out the game with a 8-3 run, with Rohman making a 3-pointer during the stretch.

Busse said that, while his team has a lot to work on, there were some positives to build on for the Firebirds.

“Our message is always stay focused on the process,” Busse said. “As long as there’s a scoreboard, there’s a result that goes to it, but there’s more to talk about. Eighteen turnovers is a bunch, but it’s down from what we’ve had in the first couple of games, so it’s taken a step forward. Our shot selection, we had a stretch of about seven minutes where it was, ‘Let’s jack the first one we see,’ versus ‘Let’s find the good ones.’

“But for the other 20 or 25 minutes of that game, we’re making better decisions about our shot selection. Those are the process things we’re working on, and tonight was a game where we knew we could advance those things a little bit, and I felt we did. We needed to do it even a little bit better, but I think the girls walked out of the locker room recognizing where we got better.”

MCW (1-0) plays at Madelia on Tuesday, while GFW (0-3) hosts Sibley East on Tuesday.