Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm Cathedral’s Jake Finstad drives to hoop while guarded by Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart’s Russell Johnson on Tuesday night in a Tomahawk Division boys basketball game at Cathedral High School.

NEW ULM — The New Ulm Cathedral Greyhounds realized Tuesday that even if their shots weren’t initially falling from beyond the arc, good defense and patience would take care of things in the end.

After a rough first half of shooting, the Greyhounds got an 18-0 run in the second half to pull away from the Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart Mustangs on the way to a 64-49 win in a Tomahawk-Valley Conference, Tomahawk Division boys basketball game.

The Greyhounds (9-11, 7-6) struggled with their shooting early on, missing on their first seven attempts as BLHS (0-19, 0-13) took a quick 4-0 lead. But good rebounding, defense, and an improved shot selection helped the Greyhounds take a 28-17 lead into halftime.

“We definitely didn’t shoot well in the first half and really throughout the course of the game outside of that one stretch in the second half,” Greyhounds head coach Alan Woitas said. “I just thought we had a lot of mental miscues in the first half, maybe we weren’t locked in as well as we should have been and they took advantage of our mistakes.

“Credit to [BLHS], they’re much improved from earlier in the year, and we didn’t shoot the ball well. Some nights you have that. But obviously, defensively we did enough good things to create some turnovers to kind of get some easy buckets to get out of here with a win.

On top of that, the Greyhounds rebounded well and limited BLHS’s second chances at the hoop through much of the night.

“We definitely rebounded well,” Woitas said. “We gave up very few second-chance opportunities and that’s something we have to get better at. If there’s a silver lining here, that’s the nice part of our game tonight.”

While he didn’t get his 3-point shot to drop until hitting one late in the first half, Jake Finstad had a strong all-around finish to the game with 17 points, eight rebounds, three assists and nine steals.

Eli Anderson finished with 15 points, four rebounds and four steals also for the Greyhounds, while Ryler Collins had 7 points, Joe Gillis had 6 points and seven rebounds and Colin Anderson added 6 points.

The Greyhounds had 21 steals in the game. While Finstad had a team-high in virtually ever statistical area, Jack Edwards had a quiet-but-strong game all-around with 6 points, five rebounds and four steals.

“When I can’t score, defense is definitely where I try to help out the team,” Edwards said. “No matter if I’m leading the team in points or I’m not leading the team in points, I want to contribute as much as I can. Defense is definitely my strong suit and rebounding the ball.”

The Mustangs took their early 4-0 lead after Coltan Grunau scored off the glass and Cayden Wiggins got a driving bucket to fall. Gillis got the Greyhounds on the board with an and-one opportunity, but he missed the extra free throw.

Meanwhile, BLHS 6-4 forward Cameron McColley made things tough for Cathedral shooters with a pair of early blocks in the paint. He finished the game with four blocks.

After a 3 by Grunau, who led the Mustangs with 14 points on the night, the Mustangs went up 7-2. The Greyhounds answered with a free throw from Koopmann, a bucket inside by Brock Carlson and a baseline basket from Koopmann to tie it up.

Both teams traded baskets and leads after until Cathedral got an 8-0 run to close the half.

The Mustangs made the second half interesting early on after Grady Wegscheid hit a 3 and Wiggins had a putback to have BLHS within 4, 38-34. Moments later things changed quite a bit, however, as the Greyhounds caught fire for an 18-0 run and 61-35 lead.

“I think McColley did a nice job of protecting the lanes, we had to get him out of there in order to be able to attack the paint,” Woitas said. “But I think it just became a focus, like, ‘It’s not our day shooting the ball, we’ve gotta find different ways to score.’ I thought we did enough of that in the second half to be successful.”

Cathedral hosts Cedar Mountain on Friday, while BLHS is at Springfield on Thursday.