St. Scholastica tops struggling Knights

By JIM BASTIAN

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM -- Maybe you could see it coming in the first four minutes of the game when the Martin Luther Knights hit only one of their first six shots. It got a little better, but not much.

MLC hit only 19 of 55 field goal attempts in the game (32 percent) and St. Scholastica pieced together a 17-4 run in the second half to down the Knights 65-56 Saturday night in Upper Midwest Athletic Conference men's basketball.

Scott Johnson paced the Saints (2-0, 5-12) with a game-high 20 points.

Ben Kuerth led four Knights in double figures with 14. Tom Engelbrecht added 13, Dan Unke 12 and Tim Breitkreutz 10 for the Knights.

"We have to take care of business at home and win on the road," said Knights coach Jim Unke. "We just made our job in the conference a little tougher. We have two of our next six conference games at home. We have to be road warriors if we want a shot at the conference championship."

The Knights (1-1, 5-8) led by a 30-26 score at halftime thanks in large part to success from the free throw line, hitting 12 of 14 from the charity stripe compared to a 9 of 28 performance from the field.

But that lead dwindled and finally disappeared as the Saints' Matt Inda canned a jumper for a 39-38 lead before Tom Engelbrecht put back a shot to regain the lead for MLC at 40-39 with just over 12 minutes left in the game. But that basket by Engelbrecht was one of only four field goals for MLC in a span of just over nine minutes.

That allowed St. Scholastica to erase that one-point deficit and turn it into a 56-44 lead on an Inda jumper with seven minutes remaining.

"We had some shots in there that didn't fall," said Unke. "But we were also flat on the defensive end of the floor. They went on that run -- they had the energy -- and we looked tired defensively. I thought that the first half of the game that we played pretty good defense, but in that second half, we had a stretch where we were not rotating, giving up some easy baskets in the lane. Their offense went from the perimeter into the lane in the second half. And we did not rotate that extra man in there. That is when they went on that run."

MLC tried to scratch back into shouting distance with a 5-0 spurt on a free throw from Phil Huebner and two from Breitkreutz and a basket off a steal by Kuerth to cut the St. Scholastica lead to 56-49 with 5:06 left.

Kuerth's trey with just under two minutes saw MLC within four points at 60-56 before St. Scholastica hit five charity shots to close out the contest.

Despite that cold shooting all night, MLC managed to battle to hold leads for most of the first half taking a 14-10 lead on a Breitkreutz putback of a missed shot by Unke.

"We were cold and they played pretty good defense," commented Jim Unke. "We didn't get a whole lot of second chances. But their guards were quick and we started running our offense further out (on the floor). But we should be able to adjust to that by this point of the season. We were out of sync. We get the ball into the post and our post players wouldn't use a power move to the hoop or they would try and go one-on-one. We needed balls in and they either got (the shot) or they don't and they kick it back out."

The Knights used those free throws to hang onto that slim 30-26 lead at halftime.

Eight of their final 12 points of the first half came from the free throw line.

Also, the Knights were only successful on one 3-point shot (of nine attempts). "That is very uncharacteristic of our players," said Jim Unke. "Usually we shoot 35-40 percent and shoot 16-18 a game. Part of that is their quick guards but part of that is that our big men did not kick the ball out when they were covered.

"Our conference is pretty even and it is the little things that can make a huge difference and that is what happened tonight."

ST. SCHOLASTICA 26 39--65

MLC 30 26--56

ST. SCHOLASTICA (65): Johnson 20, Schiller 10, Ellefson 10, Grev 9, Inda 7, Muckala 5, Thelander 2, Rauschenfels 2.

MLC (56): Kuerth 14, Engelbrecht 13, Unke 12, Breitkreutz 10, Huebner 3, Zahn 2, Wendland 2.