Photo by Jake McNeill: Marshall guard Reese Drake (2) drives to the basket for a layup in the first half of the Tigers' home-opener win over Worthington on Friday night.

MARSHALL — Reese Drake scored 14 points in the first 10 minutes of the Marshall girls basketball team’s home opener against Worthington on Friday night, leading the Tigers to a 61-38 win over the Trojans.

The win was Marshall’s first of the season after they had lost on the road to No. 1 Alexandria on Nov. 28.

“All our kids were pretty excited about the opportunity to play at home. It’s our first home game and we haven’t played in a week and a half, so I think there’s some excitement here,” Marshall head coach Dan Westby said. “I think that helped our kids come out and play with some energy early on.”

Reese Drake’s early hot hand helped Marshall jump out to a 19-0 lead to start the game. She finished the game with 20 points on 9-of-14 shooting. At one point when she subbed out late in the second half, she was only 2 points shy of Worthington’s team total of 22.

“One of the things that she does such a good job of is she just sees the floor so well,” Westby said of Drake. “Not only does she have a good understanding of when she has opportunities to go to the basket but I think she’s also pretty good at seeing teammates and finding openings.”

It wasn’t until the 10:20 mark that Worthington scored its first basket, a transition layup after breaking the Marshall press on the inbound. Ali Pederson responded to the Trojans’ first bucket of the game with a 3-pointer from the left corner. Still, the Trojans started to heat up. Worthington kept pace with Marshall for the next nine minutes, with each team scoring 14 points. Still, Drake layed in a bucket with five seconds left in the half to give Marshall a 35-13 lead heading into the locker room.

“Our pressure was really effective, certainly early on, and then we stopped doing some of those things and I think that changed the way we approached things a little bit. We kind of got out of that pressure mode and maybe relaxed a little bit on the defensive end,” Westby said.

Reese Graven and Kennedy Drake provided additional scoring support for Marshall, finishing as the team’s second- and third-leading scorers with 13 and 8 points respectively. Graven shot 5-of-7 from the field while Drake went 2-of-6 from 3-point range, making her the only tiger with multiple threes.

Taleigha Bigler had a big night in terms of her ability to distribute the ball, finishing the game with seven assists with three turnovers. She also created more possessions than she lost with five steals in the game. Reese Drake led the team with nine steals while Worthington finished with a team total of seven.

Those extra possessions ended up being a difference-maker as both Marshall and Worthington shot 37% from the floor. Worthington turned the ball over 23 times with seven assists while Marshall turned it over 10 times with 16 assists.

Despite being a guard, Bigler also led Marshall on the boards with nine rebounds, three of which were offensive. Marshall finished with a team total of 12 offensive rebounds to Worthington’s six and both teams finished with exactly 22 defensive rebounds. Paige Gillingham and Kennedy Drake each grabbed six boards.

Among the Tigers’ strengths in the game was their ability to force the Trojans into foul trouble. Marshall was in the bonus just halfway through the first half.

While the Trojans closed the gap slightly at points in the second half, they never came any closer than 15 points.

Marshall improves to 1-1 with the win and will try to get over the .500 mark when they host Hill-Murray today at 3 p.m. The No. 5-ranked Pioneers have gotten off to a 1-2 start to the season, beating Park by 31 points and falling to No. 2 Benilde-St. Margaret’s and No. 7 Totino-Grace.

“It doesn’t get much easier. We’ve got two tough ones next week as well [Mankato West and No. 9 New Ulm], and both of those are on the road. So yeah, it’s a tough start. We’re going to have to be ready to go, sharpen some things up, and it’s going to be tough every night out here for a while,” Westby said.