St. Mary's hampers Worthington shooters

By JIM BASTIAN

Journal Sports Writer

SLEEPY EYE -- When Sleepy Eye St. Mary's Matt Gangelhoff scored on the 17th Worthington turnover of the game with 6:31 remaining in the contest, it gave the Knights a 48-29 lead over the Trojans.

But Worthington staged a comeback, slicing that lead to a precarious 55-46 four minutes later before the Knights came away with a 59-52 win in a non-conference basketball game Monday.

Gangelhoff led with a game-high 24 points, and Kyle Ludewig tossed in 12.

Jay Scheidt led Worthington with 13 points.

"It was a different game with us losing two players late in the game," Knights' coach Peter Roufs said. "I was happy that we had that lead going -- it is early in the year, we are making mistakes, but at the same time, we did some good things and played well enough to win."

One of the good things that the Knights did was to stick a hand in the face of Worthington shooters, who hit on only three of 21 shots from the field in the first half, as St. Mary's (1-1) erased an early 4-2 Worthington lead. The Knights took a 12-6 lead after the first quarter as Joey Wahl buried a three-pointer and Jake Bohnen scored from the paint.

St. Mary's built on that lead and swelled it to 21-11 on a hoop from Bohnen courtesy of a feed from Wahl and a Gangelhoff steal, forcing Worthington coach Ron Vorwald to call a time-out.

"We talked about how we needed to be more physical and more assertive than we were in out last game (a loss to MLBO)," Roufs said. "We were a little disappointed in our defensive intensity in that game.

"We knew that we were playing a team (Worthington) that would come out and play a physical game. We needed to match that," he said. "We made a conscious effort to do that."

The Knights dominated the Trojans and took a 25-17 lead at halftime.

St. Mary's kept up that intensity to start the second half as they built the eight-point halftime lead to a 33-18 margin with 3:32 left in the third quarter.

Kyle Ludewig's basket on a drive, a trey from Gangelhoff and a conventional three-point play on a Raul Martinez basket and ensuing free throw gave St. Mary's a 15-point cushion.

Gangelhoff then hit for his second three-ball of the quarter, and third of the game, getting nothing but net with just one second left in the quarter for a 41-28 lead.

"He (Gangelhoff) did a nice job," Roufs said. "He attacked the basket well. I thought that he did a nice job of defensively creating some turnovers and getting some nice buckets for himself and his teammates."

Gangelhoff's basket on the 14th Worthington turnover gave the Knights a 43-28 lead and used two more baskets off of turnovers to lift themselves to a 48-29 lead with just over six minutes left in the game.

Worthington came back and sliced that lead to nine points.

"We just had to take care of the ball and hit our free throws," Roufs said. "We missed some free throws (six of 13 in the quarter) and put them on the line too much."

Worthington scored 14 of their 24 fourth-quarter points from free throws.

"We were happy that we held on for the win," Roufs said. He was also pleased with the play of senior Kyle Ludewig, who finished with 12 points. "Worthington really pushed us away from entering the ball into the post -- we would have liked to have given it to him more."

The Knights lost the "B" game 53-40. David Ziegler led SESM with 10 points.,

WORTHINGTON 6-11-11-24 -- 52

SESM 12-13-16-18 -- 59

WORTHINGTON (52): Scheidt 13, Klumper 12, Aggen 11, W. Traphagen 6, Z. Traphgen 5, Soderholm 2, Feller 2, Nelson 1.

SESM (59): Gangelhoff 24, Ludewig 12, Wahl 9, Martinez 9, Alan Woitas 3, Bohnen 2.