PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. -- Eighth-ranked Wabash Valley scratched across two runs and made them stand up for a 2-1 season-opening win over No. 17 Northwest Florida State at the Panama City Beach Baseball Classic on Friday afternoon. 

The Warriors made a winner out of Aaron Biddle in his debut as head coach after serving seven years as an assistant to NJCAA Hall of Fame coach Rob Fournier, now an assistant at Western Kentucky University. 

Biddle had touted pitching as the strong suit for the Warriors heading into the season, and that is how it played out with starting pitcher and winner Jacob Frost delivering five innings of one-run baseball, followed by two shutdown innings of relief from righthander Luke Leverton. 

A sophomore transfer from Miami of Ohio, Leverton set Northwest Florida State (1-2-1) down in order in the sixth. Then in the bottom of the seventh, he used changeups and sliders to get one strikeout, breaking balls to get another strikeout, then induced the Raiders' Paul Winland, last year's Classic MVP, into a ground ball to end the game and earn a save. 

Frost struck out five batters but allowed two hits, two walks, and he hit two batters in his five innings of work. Leverton did not allow a runner while fanning two.

NWF scored the first run of the game in the bottom of the fourth inning. Just when it appeared that the Warriors were about to get out of a two-on, one out jam thanks to a leaping grab of a line drive by first baseman Landon Johnson, the next Raider batter, designated hitter Cade Sadler, hit a fly ball that dropped sharply in the outfield for an RBI hit and a 1-0 lead.

Wabash Valley (1-0) tied it in the top of the fifth inning. Keaton Mahan singled to left-center field, stole second base, went to third on a wild pitch, and scored the tying run on a ground ball out by Zamuarion Hatcher. 

In the top of the decisive sixth, freshman Richard Bonomolo, Jr., who had two of the Warriors' five hits on the day, led off with a single to left. Luke Odden followed by legging out a bunt for a hit, sending Bonomolo into scoring position at second. 

Nicklas Williams, an early victim of the new pitch-clock rule which resulted in a strike call that ended his first at-bat, then singled to load the bases with no one out. 

Johnson, a 6-foot-4, 235-pound transfer from Indiana State, got what became the winning run home on the second ground ball RBI of the day, which scored Bonomolo.

With the lead, Biddle turned to Leverton out of the pen. He made the most of a high-pressure situation in his first-ever Warrior appearance. 

The PCB Beach Classic games are being played on multiple fields at the same complex. The Warriors are scheduled to play two games on Saturday, the first at 11 a.m. CST against Wallace-Dothan, Alabama (1-0), a 9-0 winner over State College of Florida on Friday.