Staff photo by Steve Muscatello New Ulm Cathedral’s Sam Knowles takes a shot as Adam Heckman (41) of Truman/Martin Luther/Granada-Huntley-East Chain defends during the first half Thursday at CHS.

NEW ULM — There are games in basketball where a team’s offense can be struggling but its defense can bail that team out.

Thursday night, New Ulm Cathedral and Truman/Martin Luther/Granada Huntley-East Chain were tied at 32 with just over minutes left in the game.

That was when the Greyhounds’ defense went to work.

Cathedral scored 9 straight points off of four consecutive Jaguars turnovers to take a 41-32 lead, going on to top T/ML/GHEC 49-34 in a nonconference game.

James Gillis led Cathedral (9-0) with 14 points. Jon Zinniel added 12 and Chris Knowles ended with 10.

Cayden Fischer led the Jaguars (8-2) with 15 points.

“This was a defensive battle,” Cathedral head coach Alan Woitas said. “Both teams contested a lot of shots — it was a physical game — and our kids kept getting after them.”

The Greyhounds, who host Sleepy Eye on Friday in a Tomahawk Conference game, held the lead for all of the first half thanks to their early success shooting 3s.

Cathedral scored its first 12 points of the game from beyond the arc, with James Gillis canning the first two 3s to help give the Greyhounds and early 12-4 lead.

The Jaguars cut the lead to 14-12 on two free throws from Fischer.

A Zinniel basket with three minutes left in the half increased the lead to 22-16, with the Greyhounds holding a slim 24-20 lead at halftime.

The Jaguars used their first three 3-pointers of the second half to take a 32-30 lead after an Owen Walter 3 before Cathedral tied it up at 32.

That was when the defensive pressure of the Greyhounds took over.

“We really started to frustrate them offensively,” Woitas said. “We got them off of their spots and our defense turned it up to another level.”

Two baskets off of turnovers from Chris Knowles, a conventional three-point play from Gillis off another turnover and a Tony Geiger bucket off of one of 12 Jaguars turnovers in the second half had Cathedral holding a 42-32 lead with under two minutes to go in the game.

“We pride ourselves in being a good defensive team and a good rebounding team and we did both of those things really well in the second half,” Woitas said. “And we had balanced scoring tonight and in order to to win in this section we need to have that.”