Wheaton North's Coduto fills stopper role

After losing four straight games, Wheaton North's baseball team needed a stopper.

Mike Coduto was more than willing to tackle the role.

The senior right-hander shut down Naperville North on Wednesday, getting the Falcons back on track with a 2-1 complete-game DuPage Valley Conference road victory.

"We've lost a couple of tough ones, but we've been playing real well," said Coduto, who scattered 6 hits, allowed no earned runs, struck out five and walked one. "I'm a senior, I'm supposed to show leadership. I've been in that situation before in a big game, and I had my defense backing me up. We all just did our jobs."

All 3 runs were scored in the third and fourth innings as Wheaton North (21-8, 11-6) opened the scoring in the top of the third on Jeff Schalk's RBI double. Naperville North's Alex Khoury drove in Tyler Gehr with a single in the bottom of the third after Gehr singled, went to second on an error and advanced to third on a passed ball.

After that, however, the Huskies (23-6, 13-4) couldn't push anything across the plate against Coduto. They managed only three baserunners in the final four innings - all three stranded in scoring position.

Naperville North didn't hit a ball out of the infield in the final three innings, and the Falcons' talented infield took full advantage of all the grounders.

"We'll give their pitcher credit, but at the same time I didn't think we had a real good focus going into today, and I don't know why," said Naperville North coach Carl Hunckler. "We made some mistakes on the bases early in the game that just killed us. We didn't hit the ball hard at all today. Nobody drove the ball, and I guess that's a credit to their pitcher."

Reece Butler's one-out double set up Wheaton North's winning run in the fourth inning. After Nick Norder singled Butler to third, Dale Trimble's sacrifice fly drove in the go-ahead run.

Harrison Katz (6-3) pitched 5-plus solid innings for Naperville North and Andrew Arenson finished the game with 12/3 scoreless innings of relief.

Mariano Long went 3-for-3 for the Huskies while Mike Small, who scored Wheaton North's first run, went 2-for-4.

"That was as good as any performance we've had on the mound this year," Wheaton North coach Dan Schoessling said of Coduto's outing. "We sure needed it. Mike just did a really nice job of controlling the game. He never really gave them a chance to get anything going."