Cathedral overcomes McLeod West 56-43

By JIM BASTIAN

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM -- In a game that featured 66 combined turnovers and shooting percentages of 34 and 36 per cent, New Ulm Cathedral came out on top with a 56-43 win over McLeod West Tuesday night in Tomahawk Conference boy's basketball.

Tom Hazuka led the Hounds (2-0) with a game-high 17 points with sophomore Eric Schugel throwing in 12.

Ryan Brugman led McLeod West (0-2) with 14 points.

"The speed at which we want to play and Cathedral wants to play is up-tempo," said McLeod West coach Steve Worm who saw his squad guilty of 41 turnovers in the game. "We both have a lot of young kids on the floor (McLeod West started two sophomores while Cathedral saw three sophomores starting) so turnovers are going to happen. And neither (Cathedral coach) Bailey Blethen or I care for those turnovers."

"We are going to get turnovers with our style of play," commented Blethen, who saw his team commit 25 turnovers in the contest. "Some of those turnovers, I wasn't unhappy about -- others I was. When we throw a bad pass in our half-court offense, that makes my hair curl. But if the kids are running the floor and they throw a pass down the floor, I think that we are going to score more often than we are going to throw the ball away."

The Hounds, who shot 34 per cent from the field (23-of-67 for 34 per cent) would take a fast 16-4 lead midway through the first quarter with treys from Tom Hazuka (one of three 3-balls in the game for the senior) and Eric Schugel staking the Hounds to that double-digit lead.

"We did not want to get down -- we wanted to control tempo and Cathedral got the tempo created right away and got out to that big lead," said Worm. "Then we had to play from behind and we do not have the shooters to do that."

The Hounds, who would force eight turnovers in both the first and second quarter, saw that lead swell to 27-13 on a trey from Adam Neubauer with 5:25 left in the first half.

And if you wanted to focus on the difference in the game with the combined turnovers and shooting percentage, you need only look to the baskets from beyond the arch in the game.

The Falcons took five long-range shots and did not make any while Cathedral hit on six of 21 bombs -- a difference of 18 points.

Cathedral ended the first half with an 8-2 run with Schugel canning his second 3-ball of the game for a 37-20 lead after the first 16 minutes.

It was a half that saw Cathedral force 16 turnovers by the Falcons.

"I thought that our kids forced a bunch of turnovers and I thought that we ran our zone offense better than we did last week against Springfield," Blethen said.

The Hounds, who play at GFW on Friday, maintained a 14 point lead early in the third quarter as both teams hit only one of six shots from the field in the first three minutes before Hazuka scored off the 20th turnover by the Falcons. A bucket by Jimmy Vancura off a pass from Joey Lux preceded a trey by Hazuka and a layup at the buzzer by the senior for a 48-33 lead.

But it was a quarter that saw the Hounds hit on only four of 13 shots from the field with two of those coming on lay-ups.

"I am concerned about the shooting -- I want to be at about 45 percent," said Blethen."We did not have a good shooting night."

Both teams committed 13 turnovers in the final eight minutes with 12 of the combined 18 points coming courtesy of turnovers.

"We had a win and I thought that our performance was medium,"Blethen said. "I was happy with some parts of our game and not happy with other parts. But this is a young team -we had some kids sick yesterday. So overall, I thought that we played pretty well."

Cathedral won the "B" game 61-36. Joe Hazuka led the Hounds with 20 while Jeremiah Ahlbrecht scored 11 for McLeod West.

McLEOD WEST 9 11 13 10--43

CATHEDRAL 20 17 11 8--56

MCLEOD WEST (43): Brugman 14, Bumgardner 6, Pichotta 6, Maurer 6,Strand 5, Rosenau 2, Bussler 2, Hedtke 2.

CATHEDRAL (56): Hazuka 17, Schugel 12, Lux 8,Neubauer 6, Vancura 5, Wilfahrt 2, Wolfe 2, Schreiber 2.