Dennis, Rolling Meadows ground Elk Grove

A typical outing on the mound for Matt Dennis involves a lot of strikeouts.

But with strikeouts come high pitch counts, so the Rolling Meadows junior took a different approach to Wednesday’s Mid-Suburban East clash at Elk Grove.

Dennis induced 15 groundball outs on his way to a complete-game 1-hitter as the Mustangs rolled to a 7-0 victory over the Grenadiers.

“I have been throwing a lot of pitches lately,” Dennis said. “My pitch count was down, which was a big thing. It hasn’t been me earlier. I haven’t been throwing a lot of groundballs.”

Dennis threw 54 of his 81 pitches for strikes while working around three errors and yielding only a third-inning double to Johnny Assimakopoulos.

The right-hander was able to effectively locate his off-speed pitches all game long. And during one stretch from the third inning through the fifth, Dennis got 11 straight groundballs to keep Meadows (14-8, 6-2) in the East lead by a game over Prospect and Hersey.

“Matt in general strikes more guys out and his pitch count is usually pretty high by about the fifth inning,” said Meadows coach Jim Lindeman. “This (approach) works better for him.”

Meadows got Dennis all of the support he’d need in the first inning as Mike Olson led off the game with a single and scored on Mike Dolan’s groundout.

The Mustangs added to the lead in the fifth after back-to-back doubles from Matt Hendricks (2-for-3) and Dolan but they really created separation in the sixth, scoring 5 runs on just 2 hits. Zach Schultz had the big blow, a 2-run single through a drawn-in infield to make it 4-0.

“Everyone had a lot more confidence after that inning,” Dennis said. “We had a team meeting before the week to get focused. This was big to get ourselves back on track to where we know we can be.”

Lindeman was pleased with the way his team executed, especially in the sixth. In all, his team got down four sacrifice bunts. Unfortunately for Elk Grove (12-9, 4-4), it committed errors on three of them, including two in a row in the big sixth inning.

“It was a tight ballgame up until then,” Lindeman said. “We executed offensively with some small ball and Schultz came in with the big hit.”

Elk Grove’s only scoring threat was in the third inning. After Assimakopoulos laced a double to left-center, Jack Czeszewski worked a nine-pitch walk to put two on with none out. But three groundouts later, Dennis and the Mustangs escaped unscathed.

“He was very impressive,” said Elk Grove coach Terry Beyna of Dennis. “We’ve been struggling and just looking to take little steps to play better baseball.”