Staff photo by Jeremy Behnke New Ulm Cathedral’s Luke Mages drives to the basket as St. Clair’s Thomas Loeffler (24) and Derrick Zeldenrust (55) defend on the play on Saturday at New Ulm Cathedral.

NEW ULM — St. Clair jumped to a 37-16 halftime lead and went on to top New Ulm Cathedral 73-34 Saturday afternoon in a non-conference boys’ basketball game.

Derrick Zeldenrust led the Cyclones (2-0) with 18 points with Connor Andres adding 16.

Jevan Wilfahrt paced the Greyhounds (0-2) with 15 points.

“St. Clair is a really good team,” Cathedral coach Alan Woitas said. “They are an experienced team that brings a lot of players back who have been successful in years past. We knew tonight was going to be a challenge.”

And it was an even bigger challenge as the Greyhounds were without starter Sam Knowles, and key players Levi Jakes as well as Sam Blomberg due to injuries.

“We had some different people that we were asking to handle the ball and St. Clair is a team that presses you with those players out and being short-handed,” Woitas said.

Cathedral had 22 turnovers in the game.

St. Clair took a lead of 19-7 and then increased that to 29-9 on an Alex Freitag basket with 5 minutes left in the first half before a 3-pointer from David Wilfahrt got the Greyhounds in double figures.

The Cyclones increased their lead to 47-16 early in the second half.

Cathedral is at Cedar Mountain Tuesday.