NATCHEZ — The Cathedral School varsity boys opened their first district 7-1A game with a sluggish first half, but a solid third quarter helped the Green Wave pull away from its opponent Tuesday evening.

Cathedral rode a 29-point third quarter to defeat the Mississippi School for Deaf 69-39 to improve to 2-2 on the season, 1-0 in district play.

“It looked like when a team just comes back after a break,” Cathedral head coach Peter Arnold said. “We just looked sluggish and lethargic.”

Arnold said he spoke to his team at halftime, and challenged them to come out in the second half with a stronger effort.

“We played with more enthusiasm in the third. We started going down and making the easy shots we had been missing in the first half. We just started playing cleaner, smarter ball.”

Charles Lee led in scoring for Cathedral with 14 points. Carl Hammitte added 13 points, and Collin Hammons tallied 10 points.

The Green Wave’s Caleb Upton, whose normal position is shooting guard, took over at point guard for Daniel Huffines, who was out of town to attend a funeral. Upton finished with eight points on the evening.

“I thought Caleb did a good job at point guard in place of Daniel,” Arnold said. “The point guard’s kind of the leader out there on the court, and he filled in well.”

Cathedral was only ahead 26-20 at the start of the second half, but held MSD to just six points in the third quarter. Hammitte scored seven of his 13 points in the third, and eight of Hammons’ 10 points came in that quarter.

Marquarius Boyd led MSD in scoring with 11 points. Derek Schmitz added 10 points.

“Overall, it’s a good win in our first district game, but we know we can play better and harder than we did, and we’ll have to if we want to do well in the district,” Arnold said.

Varsity girls

Cathedral 56, MSD 46

Ana Perry tallied 16 points for the Lady Green Wave as they defeated MSD Tuesday.

Ginny Daggett added 12 points for Cathedral. Mae Durkin scored eight points and Betsy Daggett had 6 points for the night.

Neshara Joseph scored 23 points for MSD.