![Nick Williams slides home with a Warrior run vs. Vincennes on Tuesday [Photo by Jonathan Leach].](/sports/bsb/2022-23/Nick_Williams_scores.jpg?max_width=450)
MT. CARMEL, Ill. -- The Wabash Valley baseball Warriors won their home opener on Tuesday by defeating Region 24 rival Vincennes, 8-2, at Fournier Field.
The eighth-ranked Warriors improved to 7-5 with the win, their fourth in a row. Vincennes fell to 3-5 on the season.
WVC scored three runs in the first inning, then began to pull away in the middle frames, with a 12-hit attack.
The quick start made a winner out of starting pitcher Maddox Pennington, a career first in Warrior pinstripes for the sophomore righthander.
After the visiting Trailblazers touched Pennington for one run in the top of the first inning, the Warriors countered with three runs in their first at bat. Bruce Jellison hit a double that scored Richard Bonomolo, Jr., and Nick Williams. Then, Jellison scored on a base hit by Landon Johnson.
All of that before the first Warrior had been retired.
Vincennes scored once in the fourth to close to within 3-2. The Warrior bats then went back to work with two runs in both the fifth and sixth innings, and a single tally in the seventh to complete the scoring.
In the fifth, Logan Murphy slashed a one-out double that scored Jorge Rodriguez and Michael Lareau to extend the Warrior lead to 5-2.
Rodriguez hit an RBI double in the sixth that scored Williams, and Jellison made it 7-2 when he scored on a passed ball.
In the seventh, Jellison hit a ground ball to the right side that the pitcher covered, allowing Luke Odden to score the final run.
Pennington, who appeared in six games last year as a freshman, all as a reliever, made the most of his first career start, allowing only one run in three innings of work.
From there, Warrior manager Aaron Biddle handed the ball to Fairfield freshman southpaw McGwire Taylor, who also worked three innings, giving one run but striking out four batters.
Isaac Seeger worked a scoreless seventh and eighth, giving away to Louis Phillipe Langevin, who closed in the ninth.
The Warriors do not have another home game until March 9, when Frontier (5-4) calls for a 2 p.m. CST single-game, the first of a three-game series that concludes with a doubleheader in Fairfield two days later.
Next up for WVC is a weekend trip to Millington, Tennessee for the Babe Howard JUCO classic. The Warriors will face Indian Hills, Iowa (2-2) and Southwest Tennessee (13-2) on Friday, then will play Carl Albert State, Oklahoma (3-6) and Southeastern, North Carolina (4-6) on Saturday.