Cathedral

holds off

T'Birds

By JIM BASTIAN

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM -- Saturday night, New Ulm Cathedral's Will Moeller scored his 1,000 career point. But more important, his three-point basket with five minutes left in the third quarter ignited a stagnate Cathedral offense enroute to a 37-36 win over GFW in Tomahawk Conference basketball.

Moeller, a senior, scored a game-high 22 points and now has 1,006 points in his Hound career.

Jasper Kruggel led GFW (9-5;11-6) with nine points.

"I thought that we had a pretty solid defensive effort tonight," commented first-year GFW head coach Rich Busse. "When we give up 40 or less points, we should win the game. I was happy with the defensive effort but we have to take advantage of the offensive opportunities; the 21 turnovers that we had tonight, that is more than we should. That is the difference."

But in the first half, it was the GFW defense that held the Hounds to only 10 first half points as CHS hit only 2 of 22 field goal attempts in the first 16 minutes as they trailed 18-10 at the break and were down 24-14 on a Ryan Blumhoefer basket with five minutes remaining in the third quarter.

Enter, Will Moeller. He hit a 3-ball before following that up with a jump shot. His two free throws sliced the T-Bird lead to 25-21 with four minutes left in the quarter as the Hounds trailed 28-26 at the end of the third quarter.

Cathedral would outscore GFW 23-12 following Moller's only trey of the night.

"Will really sparked our offense tonight, "said Hound basketball coach Dan Wolfe who saw his team improve to 7-7 in the conference and 8-9 overall. "I think that with it being Parent's Night and Will's 1000 point.. we were just tight and tenative. There is no question that he (Moeller) sparked us."

Moeller, who would score all 11 points for Cathedral in the fourth quarter, inched closer to that 1,000 point mark by sinking free throws; first two when he was fouled and then collecting his 1,000 point by hitting three free throws with 8:38 left in the game. More important, it gave Cathedral a 31-28 lead; lead that they would not lose.

Moeller's sixth free throw of the quarter and a bucket off a pass from Dave Groebner lifted CHS to a 35-30 lead with 3:06 left in the game.

"I realized that I needed to step up, take some more shots and find the open guys," said Moeller. "We weren't getting anything going offensively."

"They went to their best player and they were going to live or die by what he did," said Busse.

Moeller's drive to the bucket with 1:03 left saw the Hounds ahead 37-33 before Blumhoefer canned a trey to pull GFW to within 37-36. But a desperation shot by Scott Erdal was wide at the buzzer as Cathedral escaped with a win.

GFW, who had lost 55-41 earlier to the Hounds, held a 10-6 lead after one quarter and built that to a 16-8 lead on four free throws from Bryan Miller and took that eight point lead into the lockerrroom on a Blumhoefer bucket.

Cathedral won the "B" game 41-24. Tom Hazuka led CHS with 21 while Karl Pagel topped GFW with eight.

GFW 10 8 10 8--36

CHS 6 4 16 11--37

GFW (36): Kruggel 9, Miller 8, Blumhoefer 7, Nachreiner 5, Hahn 3, J. Erdal 2, S. Erdal 2.

CHS (37): Moeller 22, Biebl 4, Goblirsch 3, Reinarts 3, Schreiber 2, Groebner 2, Schugel 1.