It wasn’t a hit-and-run by design even though one was perfectly executed.

“[Nick] Zona had a good jump and I figured if I’d put the ball in the outfield, he’d have a good chance to score,” James Madison freshman Chase DeLauter said after delivering the walk-off RBI single in the bottom of the 10th to give the Dukes a 1-0 victory in their home opener over visiting Quinnipiac on Friday at Veterans Memorial Park.

“First time I’ve ever hit a walk-off,” DeLauter said. “Feels good.”

Zona reached on an infield single the at-bat before and came all the way around from first to score the game-winning run.

Dukes coach Marlin Ikenberry said Zona took off in an attempt to simply swipe second base when DeLauter laced a 2-1 pitch through the vacated area by the shortstop, who left to cover second base.

“I honestly couldn’t believe it,” winning pitcher Brett Ayer, a senior reliever, said of watching Zona round third and cross the plate. “I was like ‘Oh my goodness,’ because I couldn’t believe it.”

Ikenberry said: “It was a great play and it worked out in our favor.”

The home third-base dugout emptied and mobbed DeLauter just beyond the pitcher’s mound in celebration, dumping a filled Gatorade bucket on DeLauter.

But prior to the extra frame, the Dukes (2-3) and Bobcats (0-4) were locked in a stalemate thanks to their pitchers.

JMU junior starter Nick Stewart threw six shutout innings yielding only four hits and a walk while striking out seven. Quinnipiac senior starter Christian Nicolosi gave up just four hits and struck out five over seven innings.

“Both sides executed great pitches the entire game,” Quinnipiac coach John Delaney said. “They had some opportunities early in the game and we found a way out of it, and then the opposite happened later in the game and we didn’t produce, and they just pitched really well.”

On Stewart’s 105th pitch, his final of the evening, he struck out the Bobcats' Colton Bender to escape a second-and-third jam in the sixth. A batter before, Stewart retired Kyle Maves looking.

A 6-foot-5, 235-pounder, Stewart had his fastball sitting above 90 mph and used his off-speed pitches effectively.

“[Bender] is a righty, so I busted two fastballs away,” Stewart said, “and I was able to get him on a slider that didn’t really bite that well.

“Getting deeper into that count, [pitching coach Jimmy] Jackson actually called for a fastball, but I shrugged off to a slider because I knew [Bender] was definitely hunting a fastball. So being able to scoot that slider, I just needed it for a strike and it didn’t have to be pretty, but I was fired up after.”

Stewart and Nicolosi matched scoreless frame after scoreless frame and then so did Ayer and Quinnipiac junior reliever Connor Mahoney. Ayer punched out six hitters over the final four innings and worked around base runners while yielding two hits and three walks.

Before Zona’s infield single in the 10th, 15 straight Dukes had been retired.

“I kind of liked that,” Stewart said of him and Nicolosi mirroring each other’s effort, “being able to get back on the mound quick because you don’t have any irregular innings when you’re sitting for a while and got to go back out there. Neither of us [Stewart nor Nicolosi] won either half-inning with putting zeros on the board.”

Ayer said: “I just focused on one batter at a time because you can’t really get worried about what your team is doing on offense. You just got to do what you can control and that’s going out there and throwing strikes.”

The only struggle JMU hitters didn’t experience that the Quinnipiac lineup did was the one on the base paths.

In the second inning, Dukes junior catcher Michael Morgan threw out two would-be base stealers to erase a potential scoring chance for the Bobcats. Stewart picked off Quinnipiac’s Dylan Lutz at second after Lutz doubled to open the fifth. And in the eighth, Morgan caught a third runner attempting to steal second.

“I’ve challenged our catchers to shut down running games,” Ikenberry said. “I tell ‘em there’s only so many opportunities you get to throw guys out in a year, so you need to be aggressive at it and I was proud of the way [Morgan] caught.”

JMU can clinch a series win with a victory today against the Bobcats, who reached an NCAA regional last season after capturing the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference crown.

“They’re a great ball team,” Stewart said. “I know they returned a bunch of their guys who played in the regional last year and beat ECU, so it’s good to match ourselves up against them.”

First pitch is scheduled for 1 p.m., as the Dukes will start junior pitcher Justin Showalter (1-0, 2.25), a Turner Ashby graduate, against Quinnipiac’s Arthur Correira (0-1, 10.12).