Naso leads Laurence past Brother Rice

Updated: May 11, 2011 8:54PM

St. Laurence pitcher Charlie Naso hasn’t been the beneficiary of much run support recently from his teammates.

The Illinois recruit fired a four-hitter against St. Rita and three-hitter vs. Mount Carmel in his previous two starts. The Vikings, however, scored a total of one run and Naso was tagged with a pair of defeats.

And while Wednesday certainly wouldn’t qualify as an offensive explosion by the Vikings, the four runs they scored against Brother Rice was more than enough support for Naso.

The right-hander allowed just three hits and struck out six to lead St. Laurence to a 4-0 win over the host Crusaders in Catholic Blue play.

“The last two games I thought I did really well but we just couldn’t score,” Naso said. “Today, the offense had my back.”

The win was a big one for St. Laurence (22-6, 12-3). Mount Carmel, St. Rita, Providence and the Vikings were all tied atop the Catholic Blue entering Wednesday’s action.

“We just have to worry about ourselves,” said St. Laurence coach Pete Lotus, who Vikings host Rice in the conference finale at 11 a.m. Saturday. “We did a good job of that today. Charlie was tremendous. He’s been huge for us with Kyle (Wood) not throwing.”

Naso and Rice pitcher Mike Yacko engaged in a good old-fashioned pitchers’ duel for six innings.

Yacko’s only mistake was a two-out single to Kevin Smith in the fourth that scored Wood (1-for-2, 2 walks) for a 1-0 lead.

The score remained that way until the seventh. That’s when St. Laurence tacked on three insurance runs on two hits against Rice relievers Sean McGrath and Kyle Bernaciak.

Mike Chimera and Naso produced run-scoring singles and Smith added a sacrifice fly to make it 4-0.

Naso, who threw 93 pitches, issued a two-out walk to Jon Mahay in the seventh before striking out Kevin McDonnell looking at a nasty deuce to end the game.

Dominic Albanese, Ryan Koziol and Yacko were the only Crusaders (10-13, 7-8) to record hits — all singles — against Naso. In fact, Rice didn’t have a baserunner reach third base all day.

“Charlie was really good,” Rice coach Dan Szmergalski said. “He pounded the strike zone and worked fast. We just couldn’t get anything started.”

Yacko scattered four hits, two walks and struck out three over six innings. He hit three batters with pitches, all in the fifth inning.

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