Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm Cathedral’s Jake Finstad drives to the bucket while guarded by Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart’s Carter Macik during a Tomahawk Conference boys basketball game on Saturday evening at Cathedral High School.

NEW ULM — New Ulm Cathedral head boys basketball coach Alan Woitas was blunt following the Greyhounds’ 80-65 Tomahawk Conference loss to Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart Saturday afternoon.

“You are not going to win many high school basketball games giving up 80 points,” Woitas said. “And it was just the way that gave them up. We did not force them into many contested jump shots and we let them play under control offensively and did a lot of nice things.”

Chase Hubert led the Mustangs, now 1-3 overall and 1-1 in the conference, with 23 points.

Jevan Wilfahrt paced the Greyhounds (1-3, 0-3) with 19 points, with Jake Finstad contributing 16 points.

The Greyhounds, who host Norwood-Young America in a non-conference game Monday night, never led in the game.

“Every run that they made, we responded a little bit and never got over the hump,” Woitas said. “We had too many stretches in the game where we did not play good basketball.’

Cathedral was tied at 11-11 early before the Mustangs used two 3-pointers from Hubin and a basket inside from Alex Taylor for a 19-11 lead.

The Greyhounds managed to cut the lead to 26-22 on a Finstad 3 and then 35-33 at half on another 3 from Finstad.

But in the second half, the Mustangs started to take control after Cathedral cut the lead to 46-43 on an Isaac Miller basket with 13:42 left in the game.

The Mustangs used a 13-4 run to build a 59-47 lead.

“We rushed some possessions and we took some bad shots,” Woitas said. “We wasted possessions.”

And Cathedral’s interior defense was bad.

“They got in the middle of the lane and passed the ball really well and relied on all of their teammates to make the easy baskets,” Woitas said. “They definitely beat us off of the dribble pretty consistently. That is something that we have to shear up — it has been a trend here. We can correct that but we need to get the right mindset to do it on a consistent basis.

“We need to figure some things out offensively and defensively we need to establish an identity. Right now we are allowing teams to dictate what they want to do.”