Staff photo by Steve Muscatello New Ulm Cathedral’s James Gillis takes a shot between Jake Rosenstengel (left) and Mitchell Buerkle of Springfield during the first half Tuesday at CHS.

NEW ULM — With his team trailing late in the first half against Springfield, New Ulm Cathedral head coach Alan Woitas wanted his team to be more aggressive and take the ball inside.

The Greyhounds did just that, overcoming an 11-point deficit at one point and defeated the defending Section 2A champions 71-68 at Cathedral High School.

Jon Zinniel led the Greyhounds with 26 points, five blocks and four rebounds. The Greyhounds trailed 42-32 at halftime, but they responded with a big defensive effort in the second half.

“It was just figuring out their pressure and coming together and just building,” Zinniel said. “It’s really good because you don’t really know what teams are going to throw at you, you gotta come out and be able to make the adjustments in the second half that we needed to and just come together and realize what we needed to do and get it done.”

While the Tigers had the 9-point lead at halftime, it was the Greyhounds that built a 7-point lead to start the game. The Tigers responded with an 8-0 run later to go up 11-9, then another run put them ahead 21-13 on Mitchell Buerkle’s 3-pointer.

Later, a couple of baskets by Zinniel cut Springfield’s lead to 27-25, but the Tigers responded with a 9-0 run to go up 36-25, their largest lead of the game.

However, things changed in the second half.

“It was ‘get to the hoop, get some back cuts’, because we realized how much they were pressuring us so we needed to start getting stuff towards the hoop so they can’t pick us up that easily,” Zinniel said.

The Tigers got an early 3 from Mason Kretsch in the second half to go up 44-36. The Greyhounds got a pair of 3s from Zinniel and cut that lead to 48-46 and they eventually took their first lead of the second half on a pair of free throws from Kyle Goblirsch to make it 52-50.

Springfield eventually led 56-54, but baskets by James Gillis and Tony Geiger made it 58-56 in favor of the Greyhounds.

In the back-and-forth second half, the Greyhounds hit enough free throws in the physical contest to pull away. They also utilized their height in the second half and it showed with some good looks inside.

“We know that’s one of our strengths is we have to get the ball inside and that’s really every good basketball team,” Woitas said. “If we can control the paint area and develop some presence there, that’s going to better all of the other aspects of our offense. It was a very physical games, both teams really competed. It was a fun environment, I think they beat us up a little in the first half, especially on the offensive glass, but we kind of responded in the second half. I’m proud of our guys with how we did that and continued to battle throughout the game.”

Gillis scored 14 points and Geiger hit some big shots off the bench, scoring 12 points. Chris Knowles scored 10 points and Sam Knowles had 16 rebounds and seven assists.

For the Tigers, Decker Scheffler led the way with 18 points and Buerkle finished with 17 points. Nolan Hovland scored 10 points and Ivan Hovland scored 13.

Cathedral has another tough battle on Thursday when it travels to Mayer Lutheran for another key early-season Section 2A battle.

Springfield is at Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop on Friday.