Staff photo / Brian Yauger Ursuline’s Andrew Kirila fires a pitch Monday evening in a 3-0 win over Cardinal. Kirila threw 5 1/3 innings while only allowing three hits and striking out nine.

STRUTHERS — In a tight pitchers’ duel, the Ursuline bats woke up in the later half of Monday night’s contest against the Cardinal Huskies.

Irish pitcher Andrew Kirila got the starting nod from skipper Paul Kempe, who had nothing but praise for Kirila after the juniors exceptional outing in a 3-0 win to advance the Fighting Irish to the district finals.

“That’s what Drew’s done all year, that’s why he’s our guy. He’s worked hard for this and we have confidence in him. We knew it was gonna be a battle of two great pitchers and Drew accepted the challenge and he did a damn good job with it,” Kempe said.

Kirila threw 5.1 innings, surrendered just three hits, tallied nine strikeouts and hande out only one free pass.

“I trusted my stuff. Offspeed was working great and my velo was usual. The umpire was giving me calls outside so I told myself to live outside, make them drive it the opposite way and I completely trusted my defense to get the job done,” Kirila said.

The first few innings for the Irish, the team left a handful of runners on base and in scoring position, most notably in the first inning where bases were left loaded.

“We just kept telling them that we were getting on base, making (Cardinal) work and the timely hit was going to come,” Kempe said.

The timely hit came in the form of a fourth-inning double by designated hitter Luca Ricchiuti that scored center fielder Nick Bako. The Irish extended its lead in the bottom of the sixth inning when a Bako double scored second baseman Marc Manning, who later scored on a wild pitch.

For Cardinal, starting pitcher Jake Bean also went 5.1 innings, collected six strikeouts and gave up nine hits in the loss.

Going into the game, Kempe said he knew Bean was going to “bring it.”

“We knew what we were facing with their pitcher,” he said. ” That kid’s a stud. We prepared for it and we knew we had to put the ball in play. I’m really proud of how our at bats were. We made him work… That was a heck of a pitchers’ duel.”

Cardinal head coach Jon Sandoval said Kirila’s offspeed pitches were the difference maker for his team.

“We’re not used to seeing a soft-tossing lefty like that. He had a decent fastball but his curveballs and offspeed were throwing our timing off. We were talking about making those adjustments in the box,” Sandoval said.

Similar to Ursuline, Cardinal threatened to score, but was a key hit short of crossing the plate. Sandoval said he would have liked for his guys to stay within themselves, not try to do too much and put the ball in play. He also wanted to limit the amount of strikeouts looking. Four of the team’s 10 strikeouts were looking.

“Some of the situations I wished the guys would have relaxed, took a breath and just play. We had some called strike threes that we were looking at. It was a hard fought game,” he said.

Ursuline will take on Rootstown, who defeated Cardinal Mooney 11-1 on Monday, Wednesday night at Cene Park in Struthers.