Photo by Jeff Campbell Shadyside’s Ryan Collins follows through after his delivery to the plate Tuesday against Bridgeport. The junior fanned 17, walked two and gave up one hit in a 4-0 victory.

SHADYSIDE — Tuesday might have been April’s Fool Day, but Shadyside junior Ryan Collins wasn’t joking around on the mound.

The crafty lefty struck out a career-high 17 Bridgeport batters in tossing a 1-hit shutout in a 4-0 Tigers’ victory on a sunny, but crisp afternoon at Fleming Field. Seven of his Ks came looking.

“They were all on fastballs,” Collins said of the caught-lookings. “My fastball was working pretty good today.”

One pitch — a fastball “right down the middle” — that he’d like to have back resulted in the Bulldogs’ lone hit. Losing pitcher Connor Nelson led off the top of the seventh by ripping the first pitch he saw into the gap in right-center for a double.

“Our pitching will be a strength for us. Offensively, our guys have gotten a lot bigger and stronger from a year ago,” Shadyside head coach Jason Collins said. “That will really help us, but we are going to rely heavily on our pitching.”

“He (Collins) pitched a great game. He’s one of the top pitchers in our division,” Bridgeport head coach Billy Timko allowed. “We won’t see a better pitcher than him all season. If we don’t get guys on base, we can’t do anything.”

Collins struck out the side in order three times, including the seventh when he fanned four Bulldogs, one reaching on a dropped third-strike. He issued two free passes and hit a batter, but two of the runners were erased on the basepaths.

The debuting Bulldogs had runners on the corners with two out in the top of the first, but a caught stealing at second ended the frame. In the fourth, Cy Booth was hit by a pitch with two outs. A balk moved him to second and he scooted to third on a wild pitch. With the count 2-0 on Carson Sauvageot, the next pitch sailed to the backstop as Booth broke for home. However, the ball caromed off the backstop right to Shadyside catcher Damien Russell who applied the inning-ending tag.

“We had a couple baserunning blunders that hurt us early,” Timko added. “We’ll learn from this game and get better.”

Shadyside (2-0) scored the only run Collins would need in the bottom of the first. Wyatt Parr was hit by a pitch leading off. He advanced to second on a single by Collins and went to third on a fielder’s choice. With two outs, Russell slapped a seeing-eye bouncer up the middle to plate Parr. Aiden Clegg’s RBI groundout made it 2-0 in the fourth and a series of Bridgeport errors in the sixth allowed two more runs to score.

“You’ve got to take advantage of what the opponent gives you,” Coach Collins said. “We did that a couple of times today. That’s the sign of a good ballclub.”

Nelson struck out five, walked a pair of yielded five singles in taking the loss.

“I thought Connor pitched well enough to win, we just didn’t give him any support offensively,” Timko noted. ” We played decent defense until the last inning. We’re young. We’ll come back from this.”