SENECA – There are times over the course of a high school baseball season where the stars align to allow two good teams and two good starting pitchers to lock horns.

One of those times was Tuesday afternoon, when the Marquette Crusaders and Aiden Thompson took on the Seneca Fighting Irish and Matt Cruise in the first of two Tri-County Conference matchups this week.

In the end, Seneca (9-2, 6-1 TCC) strung three consecutive hits together in the bottom of the sixth inning to earn a 1-0 victory over Marquette (15-1, 3-1).

“When you have kids on both sides playing the game like they did today, it’s something special,” Seneca coach Tim Brungard said. “This was a playoff atmosphere midway into the season.

“Proud of the guys for this one and looking forward to another battle on Thursday.”

Cruise (5 2/3 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 4 HBP, 13 K) and Thompson (6 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 7 K) battled through five scoreless innings, each allowing one hit.

With two outs in the sixth, the Irish received a double by Bryce Roe, an infield single up the third base line by Tyler Sulzberger and an opposite-field RBI single to left by Casey Clennon to score pinch runner Zack Salzberger.

“Casey is a sophomore who is going to be huge for us the remainder of this season and the next two,” Brungard said. “It was awesome to see him step up in a crucial situation and get that hit. He was smiling from ear to ear, and rightfully so.”

Winning pitcher Paxton Giertz, who had replaced Cruise after the starter reached the pitch-count limit with two outs in the sixth, recorded a strikeout to close the inning, then fanned all three Crusaders in the seventh to close out the win.

“[Cruise] dominated the game. He shut us down, and they beat us,” Marquette coach Todd Hopkins said. “He may have had troubles at times locating his fastball, but his slider was awesome today, and when he needed to get the fastball over, he did. All the credit goes to him, he pitched a heck of a game.

“Aiden pitched well too, but that’s baseball. Carson Zellers also made a couple of really nice plays at second base to keep things closer than maybe it should have been. We had our chances, bases loaded twice and just couldn’t get one in.

“Credit Seneca on all facets today, they played a solid all-around game.”

Cruise faced the aforementioned jams in the second and fourth innings but used a pair of strikeouts and a 6-4-3 double play to keep the visitors off the scoreboard.

“Today when my fastball was off, my curveball was on, and vice versa,” Cruise said, adding he’d been waiting for this game after losing to the Cru in last season’s regional semifinals. “It was sometimes batter to batter, so I had to make adjustments throughout the game.

“Austin Aldridge was so good behind the plate for me today. He likes to stay fastball a lot, but today he realized early on that my curveball was my best pitch and just kept throwing down the sign for it. We were on the same page all game long.”

Seneca almost took the lead in the fourth, as Calvin Maierhofer lofted a ball to short right field with a man on second and two outs, but Zellers raced back and made a great diving catch to keep the game scoreless. Zellers also made a diving stab of a liner with a runner on second in the sixth to keep it a one-run game.

“Matt’s our guy,” Brungard said. “He’s going to be the guy we give the ball to in big games. I couldn’t have asked any more from him today, he gave a super solid effort.

“As well as Matt threw, I thought Thompson threw every bit as well. You can tell he is a well-coached kid and has a heck of a lot of talent. He kept us off balance for most of the game, then we were able to put the ball into open spots three times in a row in the sixth.

“This was a super ballgame all the way around.”