In the fourth encounter between the two teams this season, the Mohigans earned a 5-3 road victory at Patriot Field, a win which puts them in the driver’s seat heading to Mylan Park on Thursday for the second game in the best-of-three.

“Wheeling Park’s a very good baseball club, their pitcher did a great job pitching,” Morgantown head coach Patrick Sherald said. “They hit some balls hard, we were fortunate. Our pitcher on the bump, Vincent Aloi, pitched a really quality game for us. We played good defense. Offensively, we had to scrap together some runs, put some pressure on, lay some bunts down, generate situations where we were fortunately able to score some runs. Happy to get out of here with a win against a good team, it’ll be a battle tomorrow- it seems like these games have always been battles the last couple years.”

The Patriots and Mohigans traded runs back and forth across the first four innings of Wednesday’s meeting- Wheeling Park scored in the first and the fourth, Morgantown scored in the first and the third- before Morgantown broke the 2-2 tie with three runs in the sixth inning. The Patriots would put across one run, and get the tying run up to the plate, but fall short of a comeback.

Wheeling Park committed three errors on Wednesday, including a couple of mistakes in the sixth which aided the Mohigans’ cause.

“Little bit self-inflicted,” Wheeling Park head coach Steve Myers said of the loss. “We need to be better in those pressure situations. We had a good approach. It’s baseball, sometimes it doesn’t go your way. It’s a three-game series so we’ll be ready to go tomorrow.”

Morgantown laid down lots of bunts Wednesday, including a run-scoring sacrifice bunt in the third inning, and a bunt which led to a fielding error- and a run- in the pivotal sixth frame.

With no outs in the top of the sixth, Mason Bowers stood on second for the Mohigans. Koa Silvers laid a sacrifice bunt down the third base line, but upon retrieval the throw to first was in the turf and got by the first baseman, allowing Bowers, already on his way to third base, to round the bag and get across home plate.

Vinny Aloi hit a sacrifice fly later in the inning to put Morgantown ahead 4-2. Jackson Bredeson came home on a called balk later still to make the third run of the inning.

A two-out, two-strike single up the middle by Jaxson Updegraff in the bottom of the seventh scored Kolten Whitmire for the Patriots, with senior shortstop Nate Simon coming up next to represent the tying run at the plate, but a hard-luck lineout straight to third base ended the game.

“Our two-strike approach was very good today,” Sherald said. “We were able to hit some balls hard. In the end though, it was us putting pressure on them in the bunting game and taking some extra bags. We’re fortunate today and we look forward to tomorrow.”

Aloi picked up the win for Morgantown, striking out two and walking just one in a complete game. Aloi was able to manage runners on the basepaths and avoid the big mistake in limiting the Patriots.

Whitmire pitched the whole game for Park, striking out three and allowing only three hits.

There were more defensive highlights than offensive ones on Wednesday. Wheeling Park’s Ryland Robb had a standout day at third base, including converting a pair of impressive 5-3 putouts in the fifth. Robb made all three outs in the inning, but his final two were what had Park’s dugout fired up by inning’s end. With one out, Robb charged a weakly hit ground ball, fielding the ball cleanly and making a quick throw to first for an out. Then, with two down, Robb had to react quickly to a hard shot skipping down the third base line, diving to one side to field the ball, before getting to one knee and firing a strike across the diamond to end the inning.

Bowers made a big throw from centerfield for the Mohigans in the bottom of the sixth. With nobody out and a Patriot on second base, Robb cracked a base hit to shallow centerfield, and the runner from second was waved around third towards home. Bowers delivered a strong throw that went on a line to catcher Samuel Watson, who applied the tag at home plate to deny Wheeling Park a run.

Morgantown will host Park on Thursday with a chance to advance to the state championship. First pitch is set for Mylan Park at 5 p.m.

“Any time you’re in a three-game series against a team like that, the first one is really key. We still have to take care of tomorrow,” Sherald said.