Photo by Sarah J Prouty New Ulm Cathedral’s Mason Sprenger shoots a free throw during a Tomahawk-Valley Conference boys basketball crossover game against Mankato Loyola on Saturday at Cathedral High School.

NEW ULM — Leading start to finish, Mankato Loyola came away with an 80-52 win over New Ulm Cathedral Saturday afternoon in a nonconference boys basketball game.

Christian Barker led the Crusaders (5-6) with a game-high 21 points with teammate Covin Winter adding 20.

Eli Anderson led the Greyhounds (2-7) with 19 points.

“I told the guys in the locker room after the game was that our effort was good for the entire game,” Cathedral head coach Zach Kaiser said. “But as far as our fundamentals and our execution — it was good for about 25 of the 36 minutes today — and the 11 minutes that it was not was the difference in the game.”

The Greyhounds, who host Cedar Mountain on Tuesday in a Tomahawk Conference game, battled a bigger Crusaders team and felll behind 29-17 before they cut the lead to 29-27.

A 3 from Jimmy Jensen was followed up by two free throws from Anderson, two more from Mason Sprenger and a trey from Quinten Forst had Cathedral down by just 2 points with under two minutes to go.

“We were in a good spot right before the end of the half, but we took a shot to early and then in our press we did not communicate and let them go coast-to-coast for a basket,” he said. “That turned into a 4-point swing at the end of the half. A 4-point game turned into an 8-point deficit.”

And a 36-28 Loyola lead at the break.

Cathedral kept it close early in the second half, cutting the lead to 38-34 before Loyola used a 13-5 run to claim a 51-39 lead with 12 minutes to go in the game.

The difference was the 6-foot-5 Barker and 6-foot-6 Winter who accounted for 18 of the points in the run.

“That has been the story for us all season,” Kaiser said. “We are at a disadvantage when teams have not only height but size — Barker is a big kid who uses his body well. All that we can do is send extra guys at him and front him.”

Kaiser said that Tuesday’s game with Cedar Mountain is a big game for his team.

“We are both in smilar situations — we each lost some key players from last season and trying to rebuild this year,” Kaiser said. “It is a conference game and one that we can win.”