Jimmy Cron spun a one-hit gem on the mound and allowed just three baserunners in seven innings en route to his first career shutout as Benilde-St. Margaret’s defeated Irondale, 3-0, in the teams’ final North Suburban Conference game of the season.

It had been over six years since a Red Knight pitched had silenced an opponent’s offense as successfully.

It was May 7, 2007 when Ryan Meyers defeated North Branch, 1-0, with a two-hit outing which featured a walk and 15 strikeouts.

Unlike the hard throwing Meyers, Cron kept Irondale off balance by locating his fastball down in the strike zone and effectively mixing in his off-speed pitches. A one-out single in the second inning by Noah Espeseth broke up the no-hit bid early but he was the only Knight batter to reach base through six innings.

In the seventh, Cron hit both Jared Brenny and Ben Danielson with one-strike pitches to open the inning but got force-out groundballs from Mike Wulff and Espeseth before getting a called third strike on Matt Jarrett to end the game.

Cron’s counterpart, Ted Wiedman, was nearly as effective as he scattered seven hits and did not walk a batter but three errors would lead to a pair of uneared runs.

BSM got the only run it would need when Wiedman hit Dan Labosky with one out and he moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Sam Lynch. Keaton Studsrud then grounded a ball through the legs of Irondale second baseman Esko Aukee to bring home Labosky with the game’s first run.

In the sixth inning, with one one, Michael Kaminski hit a ball which rolled nearly to the base of the 428-foot sign in center field for a triple and Chris Landis, who came on as a pinch runner, scored when Marshall Hoemke singled three pitches later.

BSM added an insurance run when Studsrud reached on an infield hit and advanced to second on a wild pitch. Besse followed by reaching on a fielding error by Aukee, who then threw the ball away at first base for another error, allowing Studsrud to race home.

Cron’s final pitching line showed him allowing just the one hit with no walks and eight strikeouts on 92 pitches, needing fewer than 15 pitches in five of seven innings.

The middle of the Red Knight lineup did the damage offensively as Studsrud, Besse and Kaminski, the three four and six hitters, all had two hits.

BSM has a weekend off for the first time in four weeks before returning for its final two games of the season, both against Section 6AAA opponents.

Monday sees the Red Knights at Holy Angels for a 4:30 p.m. game before winding up the regular season with a 4 p.m. game at home, Wednesday, versus Bloomington Jefferson.

For a PDF version of this story, along with a box score, play-by-play and complete statistics, click here.