Waubonsie Valley brought back very little pitching from last year’s sectional champion, creating opportunities for guys like Nathan Napolitano.

Safe to say, he’s run with it.

The senior right-hander on Saturday won his third straight start this spring. Napolitano pitched six strong innings, and the Warriors capitalized on the few scoring chances they had to beat visiting Oswego 6-1 in Aurora.

“I had some pretty high expectations for myself coming into this spring,” Napolitano said. “I felt pretty good today, I felt like I had all my pitches – fastball, curveball – and threw them for strikes."

Napolitano (3-0) allowed just three hits, a walk and a hit batter, striking out five.

As much as anything, Napolitano pounded the strike zone.

He needed just 68 pitches, 49 of them strikes. It’s what Waubonsie Valley coach Bryan Acevedo has seen all spring from Napolitano, who has pitched to a 1.40 ERA over 15 innings.

“He throws strikes. He just fills it up in the zone and the ball dances,” Acevedo said. “He’s not going to overpower you but he throws all of his pitches for strikes and the ball moves. It’s hard to square up.”

Napolitano pitched junior varsity last spring while Waubonsie Valley (5-7) was making its run to the program’s first sectional title since 2005.

With just two pitchers back who threw little last year, Acevedo tabbed Napolitano to pitch his team’s season opener. He beat St. Charles East 6-2 in that game and hasn’t looked back.

“We thought he would throw a little for us, with what he has done at the lower levels but it wasn’t until we got to see it firsthand that we knew that we had someone that could throw for us,” Acevedo said. “He’s done a great job stepping up as someone we can count on.”

Acevedo doesn’t underestimate the importance of just throwing strikes, half the battle for high school pitchers that’s been a battle for this team.

“It really is, that’s been our struggle. We have lost a lot of games that we walked a bunch of guys, wild pitches – strikes win," Acevedo said. “We have learned that over the last couple years in our playoff runs. Nathan factors right into that.”

Napolitano navigated through a scoreless first inning Saturday after hitting the first batter and allowing a single to Oswego’s Drew Kleinhans.

He ran into trouble in the fourth when Hunter Amelio and Dylan Doogs hit well-placed doubles down the lines to cut Waubonsie Valley’s lead to 2-1.

But Napolitano bore down to retire the next three batters that inning, and six more to end his start.

“That was huge, big for us,” Acevedo said. “The ball kind of drops in right and he shuts it down from there. That was a big turning point. He just kind of does his thing, nothing bothers him.”

“The defense was good that inning,” Napolitano said. “They helped pick me up.”

Oswego’s quiet day offensively reflected an early trend this season.

The Panthers (7-6) have scored a total of five runs in five of their six losses, but have averaged nearly 10 runs per game in their seven wins.

“It’s kind of a microcosm of our season, the ebbs and flows,” Oswego coach Joe Giarrante said. “We’ve shown flashes where we can do things. ”Right now I feel like we can beat any team and we can lose to any team, that’s the reality of where we are at. But we’re seeing signs of things turning."

Oswego pitchers AJ Knizner, Nolan Hutchings and Jackson Dietz allowed just five hits, but walked six and hit two more. Five of those eight free passes came around to score.

“They took advantage of some opportunities when we gave them some free base runners,” Giarrante said. “We’re a young team, we’re going to have these losses, we just have to clean things up on the mound with the freebies and find some timely hitting.”

After Oswego elected to intentionally walk Warriors’ catcher and Oakland University commit Shane Torres with two out and a runner on third in the third, Nate Cerilli and Jack Roberts came through with RBI singles for a 2-0 lead.

In the fifth Jake Quinn delivered a two-out, two-run single to make it 4-1. Cerilli tacked on another two-out RBI single in the sixth.

“Nate really picked us up with that first two-out, two-strike hit,” Acevedo said. “He had a nice game, that got us going.”