Don’t think for a minute James Kulak’s effort the day before didn’t enter Ricky Castro’s mind as he took the mound for Neuqua Valley Tuesday against Naperville North.
For the second time in as many days, Castro became the second sophomore to toss a complete game in Naperville North’s direction as Neuqua Valley posted a 3-0 DuPage Valley Conference shutout.
While Kulak allowed one run during his seven innings against the Huskies on Monday, Castro did him one better in guiding the Wildcats (14-6, 9-5) to an eighth straight victory.
Holding Naperville North (8-11, 6-8) to six hits, Castro struck out five on his way to picking up his second victory of the season.
“Just the team – they make me feel like family,” Castro said. “I feel like I belong here and not as nervous anymore. … I’d say my changeup and curveball most (were working) because the wind was coming straight at me, so my fastball wasn’t really working.”
All three runs the Wildcats pieced together came as direct result of doubles.
Shortstop James Gargano led off the game with a double for a second straight game and scored on Kevin Ringlein’s sacrifice fly to put them up 1-0 in the first.
Five innings later, Ringlein led off the sixth with a double, eventually scoring on an error, before Jack Bastable drove a two-out double to left to give Castro two more runs to work with.
“Very timely, very timely,” Neuqua Valley coach Robin Renner said. “Things have to go your way a lot of times. I thought Naperville North played as well as we did. (Naperville North starter Kyle) Cobb was amazing, I thought. They hit a stinking bullet at Kevin Ringlein in the sixth inning and six feet either way and that’s scoring a run and you got second and third and who knows.”
For much of the afternoon, Cobb matched Castro pitch for pitch in going the distance for the Huskies.
Cobb scattered five hits while allowing three runs on three hits for Naperville North.
But finding a way to get a timely hit has been an issue all year for the Huskies and it was once again a problem on Tuesday.
While Matt Schwartz accounted for half of the Huskies’ six hits, courtesy of a 3-for-3 day, two times the Huskies placed two runners on in an inning against Castro but came up empty.
“I thought Kyle was outstanding,” Naperville North coach Carl Hunckler said. “He needed a little bit of support from our offense and you’re not going to win many games when you score one run in two games. So our big issue right now is offensively. Kyle pitched an outstanding game. He deserved better.”
A leadoff single from Schwartz and a walk to Eric Rodriguez got the Huskies going in the fifth with hopes of tying the game.
Castro, however, buckled down by getting two strikeouts after Schwartz getting thrown out at second on a good throw from Ringlein to keep the Wildcats’ lead at 1-0.
The Huskies brought the tying run to the plate in the seventh in the form of Zach Benaitis after Schwartz’s third single and another walk to Rodriguez.
Thanks to Gargano, a liner off Benaitis’ bat turned into a 6-4-3 double play to preserve the shutout for the Wildcats.
“It was the defense,” Castro said. “Max (Vercautren) made some crazy plays (at third). Kevin (Ringlein) had that throw (from left field) at second to get that double out of the way. James Gargano with a couple double plays – those were huge.”
