Eagles look to improve

By JIM BASTIAN

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM -- After a 3-20 season, the New Ulm Eagle boys basketball team hopes to make big improvements in the upcoming season.

'We bring back seven seniors so we hope that we can improve in some areas," Eagle coach Pat Burmeister said. "We are still trying to determine what our strengths are going to be."

One of the things that the Eagles and Burmeister hope to improve on is their guard play.

"It looks like we have some good ballhandlers who can make some penetration from the perimeter," he said. "They can also shoot the ball from the outside a little bit."

They will come from a group of players that include seniors Matt Sprung, Joey Geistfeld, Matt Frey, Milkale Gustafson and Zach Schipper along with junior Mike Maki and sophomore Jon Suess.

One of the weaknesses will be the lack of height by the Eagles with their tallest players junior Josh Schneider and sophomore Joe Babel, both listed at 6-foot 4.

"We will struggle with that," Burmeister said. "We are not big so we will have to make sure that we do a good job of boxing out for the rebounds. We need five guys rebounding all of the time. We will be playing bigger teams most of the time."

Burmeister does not have a starting line-up etched in stone yet as he looks for players. 'We are still looking to see how many guys we can play and how many we can get into the rotation." Burmeister said. "We have seven games before Christmas so that will sort itself out in those early games. Hopefully, we can play eight or nine guys during that span and it is a matter of which guys will step up ne be able to fill the roles."

He said that the two sophomores, Suess and Babel, have looked good.

"Mikale Gustafson, John Besser and Joey Geistfeld are returning starters from last year," Burmeister said. "Mike Maki along with Suess will probably share the point guard spot. Those players have looked the best so far. We are still trying to develop some depth and see what roles certain people can play. With only three wins last year, we are taking the approach that nobody has a starting position locked up and I do not see that we have a lot of winning experience back. Only winning three games, we are almost having a tryout to put the best team on the floor."

Gustafson is the leading returning scorer with nine points a game with Besser second at just over five points a game.

Other players vying for a playing time are Tom Wendinger and juniors Jonathon Curry, Josh Schneider, Adam Johnson and Nate Grathwahl.

Burmeister said that a lot of the sophomores played in the summer league at Cathedral and some of the juniors and seniors played in the Sleepy Eye summer league.

"We also had open gym where guys played. We are not overly big or quick so we have to make sure that we improve on the fundamentals in order to compete. They have played a lot of basketball and have improved but we still have a long way to go."

Burmeister feels that defense "will be huge for us this season. We have talked about it and worked on it. We need to play better team defense -- we need to be able to pressure the ball on the perimeter and look to make it difficult for our opponent to get the ball to their post player."

He looks for Waseca and Fairmont as the picks in the South Central Conference.

The Eagles open their season on Friday when they host Hutchinson.

The game at Mankato West on November 27 has been moved to a later date.

Jim Bastian can be reached at sports@nujournal.com