Coal City southpaw Lance Cuddy and Streator right-hander Clay Christoff were waging a pretty good pitchers’ duel through five innings of the Coalers' and Bulldogs' Illinois Central Eight Conference series opener Monday at Streator’s SHS Athletic Fields.

Cuddy had a little more control, a lot more offensive support and significantly more reliable defensive help, those factors adding up to his winning the duel and the Coalers taking Monday’s series opener 8-0.

“When I can just throw a pitch and know my defense can back me up whenever, I can pitch to contact, that way my pitch count doesn’t get run up so high,” said Cuddy, who worked a complete-game shutout, allowing three hits, no walks and one hit batsman while striking out 14. “I think I did a good job of that and just working ahead in the count a lot.

“I was able to land my curveball for strikes early on and attack with my fastball as well.”

The final score may not imply it, but Christoff was nearly as good.

The Bulldogs’ hard-throwing righty showed nasty movement on his pitches en route to allowing just three unearned runs through five innings. The Coalers finally started to get to him without benefit of errors in the sixth, though, chasing Christoff with a final line of 5⅓ innings pitched and six runs (three earned) surrendered on four hits, two walks and four hit batsmen with 10 strikeouts.

“It was well-pitched on both sides,” Coal City coach Greg Wills said. “We saw their guy last year, and we knew he was going to be a real good arm over here and we’d need to play real well to get him, and early on we didn’t have good at-bats against him. ... But we started getting to him a little bit, got his pitch count up and got him to leave the game, and then we started to find the barrel a little bit.

“[Streator] is a ballclub that usually swings it pretty well. So for [Cuddy] to do this against this lineup, it’s pretty impressive. He’s our guy. We feel when he’s on the mound, we have a real good chance to win a baseball game.”

The score was 3-0 when Christoff left the mound, each of Coal City’s first three runs scoring on two-out errors by a Bulldogs defense that has been trying to overcome a shaky start to the season.

“You’re sitting there in the fifth inning, it’s 3-0, and we very easily could have been up 1-0 if we could’ve gotten a bunt down. We gave them three unearned runs to start ... and with [three hits], there weren’t a whole lot of chances. Tip your cap to Cuddy.

“You’ll have days like that. You just have to bounce back and get ready to play tomorrow.”

Coal City improves to 5-3 overall, 2-0 in the ICE Conference, while Streator slips to 4-5-1, 1-2.

Cuddy avoided trouble for the most part, taking advantage of a popup bunt double play to escape a two-hit, three-baserunner third inning unscathed, then stranding Christoff’s courtesy runner at second base after his pitching counterpart stroked a one-out double in the fourth. Streator managed just one other baserunner against the Lewis University-bound lefty, who retired the final seven Bulldogs he faced.

Madden McCloskey, Keegan Angelico and Christoff provided the hits for the hosts.

Connor Henline with a two-run single and Donnie Ladas, Kellen Forsythe and Drake Stewart with two hits apiece led the Coal City attack. Gavin Berger added an RBI single in a four-run top of the sixth that broke the game open.