The UW-Eau Claire men’s basketball team started the new season with a 77-64 win over the College of St. Scholastica (Minn.) Monday at Zorn Arena, holding a 13-0 all-time record against the Saints.

“It was good to get our first win at home and it was nice to have a good atmosphere with a big crowd,” junior Matt Coenen said.

The game started off slow, with both teams failing to produce many points. But by the halfway point of the first half, Eau Claire started a full court press defense and took a lead that they maintained throughout the game.Eau Claire built a 12-point lead with a layup by sophomore Marcus Ruh at 17:20 in the second half but the Saints then closed the gap to just three points after going on a 9-0 run. The Blugolds built their lead back to 13 points at 8:29 and held a double-digit lead for almost of the rest of the game.

“We could probably have held this team for a lot less points than they got,” said junior James Pfitzinger.

Ruh was the top scorer of the night for the Blugolds, with a career-high of 22 points, followed by senior Ivan Franklin with 14 points and sophomore John Mielke with 10 points. But overall, St. Scholastica outshot the Blugolds 59 percent (23-for-39) to 54.2 percent (26-for-48).

Ruh said that he expects good things for this season and that it was definitely good to get the win.

“We have a lot of new guys, but as the season goes on we will get even better.”

Coach Terry Gibbons said what differentiates this year’s team from the one last year is that they want to win.

“Bottom line, this is a group of guys that go out to fight hard and they want to win,” he said. “These guys have really dedicated themselves in the off-season, they worked hard in boot camp … and we are still learning a little bit about ourselves every day too.”

Despite the victory, Coenen said the team needs to improve in their defense and not give away too many points. He also said that offensively, the team needs to get more of a rhythm.

“It’s a long season and we got a lot of progress that we need to make along the way,” he said. “We will have to take one day at a time.”

The Blugolds will have two away games this weekend at the UW-Platteville Classic. Friday they will play against Washington University (Mo.) and then against Clarke College (Iowa) Saturday. Both games start at 5 p.m.

Coach Gibbons said that the team needs to keep working at practice before they face both teams this weekend.

“Those are going to be two tough games to compete against this early in the season,” he said.

Pfitzinger agreed with the strength of the competition they will face.

“(Washington University) is a really good team, so we will just try to take it out on them and see how we do.”