Staff photo by Steve Muscatello New Ulm Cathedral’s James Gillis (2) makes a layup during the second half of the Greyounds’ game against Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton Thursday at CHS.

NEW ULM — While Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton was able to slow things down against New Ulm Cathedral early on Thursday night, the Greyhounds stayed strong on defense and pushed the pace more in the second half on the way to a 59-40 win in nonconference boys’ basketball action.

James Gillis hit four 3-pointers and had 18 points to lead the Greyhounds (13-1), while Jon Zinniel had 15 points, eight rebounds and four steals. Also for Cathedral, Sam Knowles had 9 points, 11 boards and two steals, while Tony Geiger added five boards and three assists.

“I thought our effort throughout the whole night was really good,” Cathedral head coach Alan Woitas said. “We really got after them, we made them play their offense further out than they would have liked. Offensively, we didn’t take care of the ball as well as we would have liked, those things happen from time to time. We know we have to clean that up, and we’ve done a good job as of late of doing that.”

After a putback bucket inside by Geiger completed a 7-0 Cathedral run, the Greyhounds pushed their early lead to 15-5 to force a JWP (5-7) timeout with 11:38 left in the first half. A 3 moments later by Tristan Schroer had the Bulldogs down 17-12, but the Greyhounds started hitting more shots late in the half, with a 3 by Gillis and a putback by Sam Knowles giving Cathedral its largest lead of the half, 27-14.

JWP cut the deficit to 27-17 at half after a late 3 by Landon Dimler.

Kobe Weimert hit a 3 for the first bucket of the second half to have JWP down 27-20, but that was the closest the Bulldogs got from there out. Moments later, the Greyhounds went on an 11-0 run that was capped off on a bucket inside by Chris Knowles to lead 40-21 with less than nine minutes to play.

The Greyhounds took their largest lead of the night, 57-32, after a 3 each by Noah Thompson and David Wilfahrt with minutes to play.

In addition to the overall effort his team displayed on Thursday, Woitas said that he liked how his players pushed the ball up the court and communicated.

“I thought we did a pretty nice job of pushing the ball up the court after a make,” Woitas said. “We didn’t maybe execute on the other end, we were almost too passive around the basket where guys just need to go score the basketball, but I thought defensively communicating we did a really nice job.”

Cathedral hosts Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop on Tuesday night in a Tomahawk Conference game.