Cathedral

basketball

announces

new coach

NEW ULM -- Bailey Blethen, 64, is the new boys basketball coach at New Ulm Cathedral.

Blethen is a semi-retired Mankato lawyer with 25 years of basketball coaching experience. Blethen has coached basketball at Mankato West and Minnesota State-Mankato.

"He has coached from youth all the way through college," said Cathedral athletic director John Vetter, who told the Cathedral players of the selection Monday afternoon.

"I am very excited about the opportunity," Blethen said.

Blethen started his coaching career at West and then moved to the college level at Minesota State-Mankato as a volunteer assistant.

"I was mostly involved in recruiting and breaking down (game) tapes; I also did some on-the-floor coaching," Blethen said.

Blethen was at MSU for three years. He returned to West and has been the Scarlets' junior varsity coach for the last five years.

Blethen said he "does not know the personnel (at Cathedral), but the system that I want to use is called 'pressure basketball.' I like to pressure the ball the full length of the floor on defense and I want to run the break and try and run the ball down the other team's throat on offense. I like to be a running and passing team."

He found out about the opening from New Ulm Area Catholic Schools superintedent Bill Moeller.

"I had to take some time to think about it," Blethen said. "I was comfortable at West, but the more that I talked about it and met with some of my friends the more it sounded like a good idea. I have not been a head coach and thought that it might be fun to run (my) own program."

Blethen said he "is looking for an assistant coach. I have a couple of people who know of some people who may be interested."

EAGLES DOWN EARLY: It is hard to come back from a 14-0 deficit during the regular seaon. In the playoffs, it is even tougher. That was the case for the New Ulm High Eagles, who spotted Worthington a 14-0 lead in Section 2-4A playoffs and could never recover in a 34-12 loss.

"It is tough to come back against a good team like Worthington," said New Ulm High coach Rick VanRoekel, who saw his team finish with a 6-4 season mark and a share of the South Central Conference crown. "Things went from bad to worse in a matter of minutes. We just could not catch up."

VanRoekel said Worthington "played some tough defense on us. Anytime that you can shut anyone down like they did (leading 34-0 after three quarters) it is a sign of a good team. We had a hard time either running or throwing the ball."

VanRoekel said the Trojans' quickness bothered the Eagle linemen all game.

"They were shooting gaps or going out around us and we did not have that step to cut them off," VanRoekel said. "They blitzed all the time and stunted a lot and when you stunt, sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't. (Saturday) they were hitting those holes and we were getting frustrated and things never really clicked for us."

SOUTHWEST CONFERENCE DOMINATES SCC: New Ulm High was not the only SCC program that had problems with a Southwest Conference team this year. In the 13 meetings between the SCC and the SWC, the SWC was 11-2. The only two SCC wins came from a St. James win over Pipetone-Jasper and a Blue Earth win over Windom.

New Ulm High lost all three games against SWC opponents (Redwood Valley, Luverne and Worthington). St. Peter lost to Worthington and Jackson County Central (in the playoffs). Fairmont lost twice to Worthington and once to Marshall; Blue Earth fell to JCC while St. James dropped two games to Windom.

"It is kind of ironic because like anything else, it goes in cycles," commented VanRoekel. "Up to a year ago, the South Central dominated the Southwest for six or seven years. Now, it has swung the other way."

FUTURE BRIGHT FOR EAGLES: New Ulm High will have some good players returning next year.

"We have some good players back in (wide receiver) Matt Suess, (linebacker) Travis Aufderheide, (running back) Kevin Neidecker (who rushed for 124 yards on 25 carries in the loss to Worthington), (lineman) Blake Kral and running backs Spencer Dickinson and Tom Bergstrom.," VanRoekel said. "We may have some more inexperience than this year to start but the 'B' squad was 7-1 and the freshman team was 6-2. So they have had success also."

FIELD POSITION DOOMS CHARGERS: One thing that makes it easy for an offense to score is good field position. Saturday afternoon, it was a big factor in Minnesota Valley Lutheran's 21-7 loss to United South Central.

"We turned the ball over and lost field position," said MVL coach Jim Buboltz. "And that gave them momentum to score points. I don't think that they could have drove the length of the field to score on our defense."

But the Rebels were able to use a short field for their offense to score three touchdowns on marches of 25, 15 and 10 yards to score.

"That puts a lot of pressure on your defense and it really hurts," Buboltz said.

What also hurt MVL was the loss of lineman Eric Voss to an injury.

"He was having a huge game clogging things up on the defense," Buboltz said. "But when you fumble the ball, allow a blocked punt ... They made things happen in the third quarter. If I had to do things over again, I would probably defer the ball to them (to start the third quarter) and make them drive the field against our defense. I don't think that they could have done that."

On the Chargers' first play of the third quarter, running back Joel Russow broke off a nine-yard run, but got stripped of the ball.

"That really turned the momentum," Buboltz said. "They (USC) forced six fumbles in the game and recovered three of them. We felt that we gave them the game. We outgained them and outplayed them. But it was that short field."

DETTMAN HAS BIG GAME: Buboltz said quarterback Josh Dettman "had a big game. He passed for over 100 yards and (had) over 50 yards running. Joel Russow had 22 tackles along with a sack. We had a good year with a lot of fine seniors on the team."

ALL-JOURNAL NOMINATIONS: High school football coaches should send in tbeir nominations for the All-Journal Area football team to The Journal or fax them to (507) 359-7362. Please have season and career statistics along with coaches comments on players.

VETTER WINS AWARD: Cathedral athletic director John Vetter was named the Section 2-1A Athletic Director of the Year. There are 40 athletic directors.