Wait, Knights rout Clippers
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MANKATO -- Led by a 32-point effort by Kaleb Wait, Sleepy Eye St. Mary's cruised by Cleveland 101-44 in a nonconference boys basketball game Saturday hosted by Bethany Lutheran College.
Wait played less than three-fourths of the game but still managed nearly a third of the team's points, along with six rebounds and six steals. Will Walter added 17 points and 10 rebounds, while Jon Petermann had 12 points and five rebounds. George Schwint also had 10 points and five rebounds off the bench.
The Knights controlled the game from the start with a 10-0 run led by Wait and Will Walter, who each scored 4 in the run. After Blake Lyons scored the first 2 points of the game for Cleveland, St. Mary's went on another run, this time outscoring the Clippers 10-3 to go up 20-7. The lead never dipped below double digits for the Knights, and the score at the end of the first half was 51-18.
The second half also started with a St. Mary's run, with Wait and Will Walter totalling three straight transition layups before Lyons ended the Cleveland scoring drought. The Knights continued to increase their lead, mostly through transition opportunities, until the 12:27 mark in the period, when St. Mary's put in their bench unit up 75-26. A running clock was implemented soon after.
Despite playing reserves against the Clippers' starters, St. Mary's continued to outplay Cleveland with some strong performances from several bench players. Schwint scored 8 of his 10 points while the clock was running, and Cole Schroepfer hit two corner 3s in the same time.
"It was great to get them some good minutes today," St. Mary's head coach Judd Walter said. "We've had a lot of tight games. It was nice to get them some exposure, get them some valuable minutes. I thought they played well. We ask them to go out there and still be aggressive, still play our game and play to compete, so it was nice to get them minutes."
Coach Walter thought his team used the game well as a chance to clean up some issues before playoffs began.
"We talked about having better possessions offensively and trying to be a little bit better about shot selection," he said. "I thought we did a nice job today of recognizing when we needed to attack and when we needed to pull out and get a timely bucket."
St. Mary's (16-6, 12-2) will host Nicollet on Monday.