Nobody really expected or wanted Will Pierce to pitch a complete game in his first start of the season. Once he got going, though, it was hard for the St. Aloysius Flashes to do anything but roll with it.

The senior right-hander allowed one hit and struck out 14 batters in a complete-game shutout Thursday night to lead St. Al to a 4-0 victory over Greenville-St. Joseph in its season opener at Bazinsky Field.

Wade Chustz’s soft single to center field in the fourth inning was St. Joe’s only hit. Pierce walked one batter and didn’t allow a runner past second base.

“I don’t think that was on the schedule, to throw a full game. Casey (Griffith) was going to come in behind me and throw the last two innings or so,” said Pierce, a Hinds Community College signee. “I kept my tempo going, kept throwing strikes and didn’t really get out of control, and I finished it out.”

Pierce also had an RBI triple as the Flashes made a winner of coach Sid Naron in his debut with the team.

Naron, who was the head coach at Mississippi Delta Community College from 2009-11, spent four years in private business before coming back to coaching. He said it felt nice to get the first win out of the way.

“It was a lot of anticipation. The guys were super excited about being able to come out here, and I was too, being off for four or five years, not being able to be out here,” Naron said. “These guys have worked hard to get to this point, and I thought they played with a lot of energy and focus. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but at the same time they fought through some tough situations and were able to overcome them. So I’m super proud of them.”

Being early in the season, and with a week until the next game, Naron had planned to let Pierce throw four or five innings and then turn it over to the bullpen to allow some other pitchers to get work. The flow of the game and the way Pierce was pitching made that plan fly out the window, though.

Pierce struck out the side in the first, third and fourth innings. He had 10 strikeouts through four innings and only allowed two balls out of the infield — Chustz’s leadoff single in the fourth inning and a fly ball to center by D’Andre Williams in the seventh.

Pierce only needed 94 pitches to complete his gem. He finished it in style, by striking out Edward Rice for the final out.

“He pounded the zone early. He was able to stay ahead of hitters and kept them off-balance. He was locating his off-speed stuff, so we felt like we could throw that at any point in time. It was great, especially with us struggling on offense,” Naron said.

While Pierce shackled the Irish, his counterpart Trevor Muzzi was doing nearly the same thing to the Flashes.

Muzzi only allowed one earned run in five innings. He walked two, struck out five and gave up four hits. St. Al scored twice in the first inning with the help of a passed ball and an error, got another run when Landon Middleton scored on Pierce’s triple in the third, and tacked on one more insurance run in the seventh with the aid of two errors and a wild pitch.

The Flashes had runners on base in every inning except the second, but couldn’t get a big hit to blow the game open. They had six pop ups or fly outs, a sign that their timing at the plate was a tick off. None of the Flashes, though, seemed overly concerned about it with an entire season in front of them to get it right and a win under their belts.

“The kid they threw was pretty good. He had a good breaking ball. He pushed it by a couple of us,” Pierce said. “We had some good hits here and there, but we’ll string it together once we get these younger guys swinging the bats a little bit more.”