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Column: Hauser’s milestone is the latest in the city of New Ulm

When New Ulm Cathedral’s Nate Hauser scored 14 points Tuesday night at Wabasso, he became the fourth high school basketball player in New Ulm to break the 1,000-career point total this season. He now has 1,005 career points.

Earlier in the season, New Ulm High School’s Connor Foley and Joey Batt had broken that mark.

And last Friday in St. Clair, Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s Jake Kettner scored his 1,000th career point.

Thus far, there have been 33 high school basketball players in New Ulm who have passed the mark.

Fourteen of them played for New Ulm Cathedral, 13 from Minnesota Valley Lutheran and six from New Ulm High School.

“He is a great leader for us,” Cathedral boys’ basketball coach Alan Woitas said about Hauser, who was the first player off of the bench for him as a sophomore. “We really depended on him to score more points for us in order to win games. This year he has become one of the key pieces for us both in rebounding and defensively. He is our leading rebounder as a guard and good defensively as well. He has developed as more of a complete player in doing things that sometimes go unnoticed.”

GREYHOUNDS HAVING SUCCESS: What has not gone unnoticed is the success that the Greyhounds have had this year on the court with a 14-5 record going into Thursday’s home game against Truman/Martin Luther/Granada-Huntley-East Chain.

Two of their losses have come to a 15-1 Springfield team with another loss to a 14-4 BOLD team.

“We continue to get better,” Woitas said. “We are playing good basketball right now and we feel like we can compete with anybody in the section on the right night — there are a lot of good teams in our section and subsection. There are seven really good teams.”

And the Greyhounds are a young team with just five seniors on the roster.

“We have a good balance of seniors, juniors and sophomores who contribute,” Woitas said. “And we have balanced scoring. We have five players who are close to averaging double figures. And we have people who can come off of the bench and knock down shots — that is a blessing.”

Woitas said that sophomore Jon Zinniel “is a really good shooter and can score inside — he is a dual threat.”

He also said that James Gillis “is a player who we ask to control the tempo or push the tempo depending on the situation. He has made good decisions.”

Two B-squad players, Ethan Kirchberg and Chris Knowles, have also seen varsity minutes and added quality depth.

“They both are ready to play,” Woitas said.

And you have a B-squad coached by Derek Wilfahrt, Kevin Larson and Ben Wolf that has a 16-3 record. So the future of Cathedral basketball is bright.

CHARGERS OFFENSE ROLLS LAST TWO GAMES: In Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s last two games, its offense has scored 103 and 89 points in wins against St. Peter and Sleepy Eye.

“That is a case of our offense playing better,” Chargers’ coach Craig Morgan said. “And both the teams we played shot well. Sleepy Eye shot over 50 percent from behind the 3-point line and against St. Peter they had three players who really lit it up.”

Morgan said that while it is not normal for a high school basketball team to score 100 points in a game, the Chargers just “went with the flow. We tried like crazy with our defense but everything that (Sleepy Eye) shot went in and fortunately we came out with a win.”

The Chargers are normally a solid defensive team but gave up 84 and 88 points in those two games.

“The tempo of the games were good but we did not defend well,” he said.

The Chargers after their win on Tuesday, have now played four games in six days with the last three of them on the road. One of those road wins was against St. Clair, a team that was 11-6 before facing the Chargers and was ranked No. 2 in Section 2A South behind Springfield.

Playing four games in four school days is hard.

“We could have practiced on Saturday which would have been ideal but the kids needed a break,” Morgan said. “Our legs were showing it last night especially in our defense. Now we have a laundry list of things to work on and one is our defensive close-outs, shutting down the shooter and we have to rebound.”

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