Cold shooting hurts Eagles in loss

By JIM BASTIAN

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM -- You've all heard the sports cliche that the game was closer than the final score indicated.

Thursday night's New Ulm Eagle-Marshall boy's basketball game was just that.

The Marshall Tigers outscored the Eagles 21-7 in the last six minutes of the game to break open a close contest and down New Ulm 78-57 in non-conference basketball.

Matt Fischer paced five Tiger players in double figures with 14 points. Sam Wiener tossed in 12 with Tom Gregg and Sean Smalls each ending with 11.

Andy Walden led the Eagles (1-4) with a game-high 16 points despite being saddled with foul trouble that saw him riding the bench most of the third quarter.

"I thought that we played really well tonight at times," said Eagle coach Pat Burmeister whose team hosts LCWM tonight. "But we just really weren't real consistent in our play at times -- we sort of lost our energy in the second quarter. We did not get back on defense and we gave them a lot of transition hoops. That showed on our offense -- we did not have energy to execute. People were not moving without the ball and our offense got stagnant."

And that lack of energy turned into a poor shooting first half for New Ulm than may have cost them an upset of the fifth ranked team in Class 3-A.

The Eagles hit in 6-of-19 shots from the field in the first quarter before going ice cold in the second quarter, canning only two of 13 shots from the field.

Marshall fell behind early at 13-7 on baskets by the Eagles' Eric Austvold and a steal and basket by Josh Zupfer on the sixth Marshall turnover of the game.

But the Tigers (6-1) climbed back to knot the game at 17-17 on baskets by Mike Kaiser and Tom Gregg.

New Ulm then went ice cold, missing their first six shots in the second quarter.

Those misses allowed Marshall to pick up transition baskets on a 10-0 run before New Ulm's Jordan Budenski got the first Eagle hoop of the quarter with 4:12 left in the first half and trailing 27-19 which eventually swelled to 32-19 and a 40-22 Marshall lead at halftime.

"I thought that we came out with energy in the first quarter and had the lead," said Burmeister. "But our offense is probably what caused us to get stagnant and lose energy. We had some good shots and did not capitalize at the beginning of the second quarter. They made a a big run."

Burmeister said that cold-shooting (19-for-58 in the game) is difficult to adjust to. "We shot bad against Hutchinson (24 percent) but other than that played a good game."

The Eagles came out in the third quarter and improved their shooting, canning 8 of 15 from the field, pulling to within 51-40 on a three-point play from Budenski and a Bob Wellmann trey.

Wellmann's basket to end the third quarter and consecutive treys from Andy Walden saw New Ulm alive and kicking, having cut the Marshall lead to 57-50 with 6:19 left in the game.

"He (Walden) hit those two, three's but then we did not play very good help defense," said Burmeister. "We stood around watching too much. After their time-out, they went into a two-man game with (Sam) Weiner and (Matt) Fischer. They picked and rolled -- the first time we switched on the screen and later we did not switch on the screen."

Despite the loss, Burmeister knows that this game -- and the game with Hutchinson -- were winable games with decent shooting.

"I told our guys to keep their heads up -- we played well. We showed that we could be a good team if we get more consistent. We have made it through the toughest part of our schedule with Worthington, Hutchinson, St. Peter and Marshall. We have made a lot of improvement."

New Ulm lost the "B" game 61-34. John Besser led New Ulm with 7 points.

The "C" team also lost 52-32. Jonathan Curry led the Eagles with 13 points with Phil Dirlam adding six.

MARSHALL 17 23 17 21--78

NEW ULM 17 5 22 13--57

MARSHALL (78): Fischer 14, Wiener 12, Gregg 11, Smalls 11, Olsen 10, Kaiser 6, Novosad 6, Pollock 5, Strautz 3.

NEW ULM (57): Walden 16, Wellmann 9, Budenski 9, Austvold 6, Boettger 4, Suess 4, Leighty 4, Zupfer 3, Peters 2.