Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm Cathedral’s Brock Carlson tries to past the ball out of a double team by Sibley East’s Evan Pautsch, left, and Ezra Weber, right, during a nonconference boys basketball game on Thursday night at Cathedral High School.

NEW ULM — It took some effort to counter the muscle the New Ulm Cathedral Greyhounds had in the post Thursday night, but the Sibley East Wolverines figured things out enough in the second half to come back and hold on for a 55-50 win in a nonconference boys basketball game at Cathedral High School.

The Wolverines were led by Riley Bussler’s 20 points, while Quintin DeVlaeminck had 15 points and Evan Pautsch added 8 points.

While DeVlaeminck has routinely led the Wolverines this year in the scoring department, the 6-foot-2 sophomore Bussler stepped up on Thursday to lead the way.

“It definitely helps confidence-wise,” Bussler said of his big night. “It helps the team out, too. If someone’s not hitting shots, then I’ve got to step up and help the team out.”

The Greyhounds, led by Jake Finstad’s 12 points and five rebounds, had a full-circle shooting performance Thursday night.

Unfortunately for them, that was not a good thing. After struggling to find their shot from beyond the arc throughout most of the first half, the Greyhounds struggled again with their 3-point shot down the stretch as the Wolverines went in front.

“I think we tried to get the ball in the paint as best we could,” Greyhounds head coach Alan Woitas said. “[Sibley East] did a nice job in their zone, kind of matching up and making those passes tough. We had a lot of tipped passes, we’ve got to do a better job of faking a pass to make a pass and make those passes clean so we can score.

“And it was just a tough shooting night. I think for the most part the 3s we took were pretty good looks, they just didn’t go in. Defensively, our kids battled and kept us in it on that end of the floor. Next game we’ll hopefully make a couple more.”

After missing several 3-pointers early in the game, the Greyhounds got one from Finstad to go up 14-8. Nathan Colling then drove inside on the other end and dished it out to DeVlaeminck for a 3 to answer and trail 14-11.

The Greyhounds went back to what was working for them with a bucket inside from Brock Carlson, who finished with 4 points but hauled in 15 rebounds, but another Wolverines 3, this time from Bussler, had the Wolverines down 16-14.

Finstad added another 3 moments later for a 21-14 lead, but the Wolverines got a pair of 3s late from Pautsch and Bussler to trail 25-23 at halftime.

“We really had to work on our defense, our 2-3 zone,” Wolverines head coach Dave Halquist said of his second-half adjustments. “[Cathedral] did a really good job of flashing the high posts and looking for the short blocks, short corners, so we had to adjust our defense a little bit. Offense, we had to start driving the ball a little bit more.

“They were overplaying us on defense, we had to start looking to get it in more. Our shooters, it’s just like anybody else, you start making a couple, now you’re feeling that confidence, but if you miss a few, the confidence is out the window. So that’s the big thing, keeping these guys positive.”

The Greyhounds opened the second half with the first two baskets before a 10-0 run put the Wolverines up 33-29, going in front on a pair of free throws from Jack Feterl and extending the lead to 4 on a 3 by DeVlaeminck. The run ended when Cathedral got a 3 to drop off the hands of Rylan Koopmann.

After a timeout, the Greyhounds took the lead back at 35-33 on a 3 from freshman Ryler Collins, who hit another 3 moments later for a 38-34 Cathedral lead. The Greyhounds then got into foul trouble and sent Sibley East into double bonus free throws with a little more than nine minutes left to play.

Down 46-43, a 7-0 run propelled the Wolverines to a 50-46 lead, with Pautsch getting the go-ahead bucket inside and Ezra Weber extending the lead with a corner 3. The Greyhounds’ last bucket came on a Jack Edwards putback off a missed 3 in the closing 20 seconds and the Wolverines added a free throw late by Pautsch to hang on.

Edwards finished with 9 points and six rebounds for Cathedral, while Joe Gillis added 7 points and five rebounds.

Being undersized against players like Gillis (6-1, 210 pounds) and Carlson (6-2, 215 pounds), DeVlaeminck said he and his teammates looked for the 3 but eventually slowed things down and picked their spots more in the second half.

“We made sure to do more backdoors because they were playing so high on us,” DeVlaeminck said. “We were struggling running our offense but then we started slowing down and started running it in the second half and pushing it, too.”

The Wolverines (4-4) are at Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted for a 7 p.m. nonconference game Friday, while the Greyhounds (3-4) travel to Hector to take on Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart in a Tomahawk-Valley Conference, Tomahawk Division game at 7:30 p.m. Friday.