Staff photo by Ari Selvey New Ulm Cathedral’s Logan Goblirsch soars for a layup during a nonconference boys basketball game against BOLD on Monday at Cathedral High School.

NEW ULM — New Ulm Cathedral nearly erased a 9-point deficit late in the second half of a nonconference boys basketball game against BOLD, but the Greyhounds came up just short, falling 62-57 on Monday.

Cathedral’s Jimmy Jensen had a chance to tie the game at 60 with under 30 seconds to play, but his corner 3-pointer just missed, and while Cathedral got the offensive rebound, it was unable to get another shot to fall. BOLD’s Tyler Ruschen hit four free throws in the final minute to seal the win for the Warriors.

“Down the stretch, our execution was OK,” Cathedral head coach Zach Kaiser said. “We were making the passes to give ourselves the chance to come back. It’s just the plays before that, what put us in this hole, is where we lost the game.

“And credit to them, they got hot shooting and started to feel confident. What we talked about before the game is this team is not as bad as their record. Everything I’ve seen on them is they play really hard and they have guys that can score. Kind of like us, they just lack varsity experience, and we’re kind of at the point of the year where, if you lacked varsity experience at the beginning of the year, some guys are stepping up and more varsity ready.”

Kaiser added that BOLD had players step up when they needed them to.

“They had a lot of guys contribute for them,” Kaiser said. “We tried to key in on a couple of their guys, and other guys stepped up and made plays. We tried to key in on a couple of their guys, and other guys stepped up and made plays when we had to focus our attention on who we were focusing our attention on. I’m proud of our guys for not giving up. We had a shot to tie it, and it looked good coming out of Jimmy Jensen’s hand, just a little bit off to the left there and could have been the difference. And that was the difference tonight. They made shots and we didn’t.”

Eli Anderson led the Greyhounds with 34 points and seven rebounds, while Logan Goblirsch had 9 points Ryler Collins added 7 points and four rebounds.

Cathedral started the game with a 10-6 lead, with Anderson scoring 8 of the first 10 for the Greyhounds. BOLD fought to tie it back at 10, but a 3 from Collins gave the Greyhounds the lead once more. A steal from Mason Sprenger led to a layup and a 22-14 lead as Cathedral seized momentum, but BOLD struck back with a 3 from Tyce Weigel. Cathedral pushed the lead out to 27-19 on a layup from Goblirsch, but BOLD pushed back, as a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from Ruschen cut the lead to 29-26 at halftime.

Anderson and Collins opened the second half with a pair of layups and a 33-26 Cathedral lead, and a mid-range shot from Anderson increased that lead to 35-27. BOLD went on a quick 8-3 run to trim the lead to 38-37, and while Anderson hit three free throws, BOLD seized a 47-41 lead with a 7-0 run as Cathedral called a timeout with 6:38 to play. BOLD’s Aiden Lerud hit two 3-pointers to extend that lead out to 52-41, but Cathedral responded with free throws from Anderson and a layup from Goblirsch to cut the lead down to 52-47. BOLD extended that lead back to 56-47 on a pair of layups.

“Our effort was good all night, so I can’t be upset,” Kaiser said. “We gave up 20 offensive rebounds, and then those offensive rebounds either led to easy buckets for them, or we fouled them. Then some of our guys got into foul trouble and had to sit who normally play a little bit, and that gets guys out of rhythm when they have to sit for a while.

“[BOLD] just plays so hard, both offensively and defensively, and I don’t think we matched their intensity for all 36 minutes. There were times that we did, but we almost kind of sat back, and when we had to turn it on we would turn on for a stretch. Then we would hit a couple of shots and get a couple of stops, and we would relax a little bit instead of trying to step on the gas pedal when we should have.”

Cathedral got back going with a floater from Anderson and went on a 10-2 run, capped off by 3s from Anderson and Goblirsch to cut the lead down to just 58-57 with under 30 seconds to play. Ruschen was sent to the line and hit both of his free throws in the bonus, and Cathedral had one last offensive possession, but the Greyhounds were unable to capitalize, falling in the final seconds.

Cathedral (6-10) hosts Lester Prairie on Tuesday.