FORT MYERS, Fla.- The #15 Florida SouthWestern State Buccaneers jumped out to an early lead and never looked back Wednesday afternoon at City of Palms Park in Downtown Fort Myers, using a 10 hit attack and seven solid innings on the hill from Robert Wegielnik to come away with a 5-2 win over South Florida State in the two teams series opener. 

 

The Bucs actually got off to a sloppy start Wednesday, committing a pair of errors on a pick off play in the top half of the 1st inning to gift South Florida State a run and give the Panthers a 1-0 lead to kick things off. 

 

They answered right away though as Warnner Rincones reached on a Panther error and later scored on a sacrifice fly from Abimelec Ortiz to knot the score at 1. 

 

A solo shot from Ronny Medina in the 4th put the Bucs in front 2-1 and an RBI single to the gap in right center from Ortiz with one out in the 5th scored Christian Lucio from third to make it 3-1.  

 

FSW starter Robert Wegielnik cruised through the middle innings and his offense rewarded him with two more runs in the 6th on RBI knocks from Rincones and Lucio to make it 5-1.  

 

South Florida State finally got to Wegielnik for their second run of the game in the 8th to knock the Bucs sophomore out, but the FSW bullpen, and namely Antonio Knowles shut it down from there, as he pitched the Bucs out of a jam in the 8th and worked a 1-2-3 top of the 9th to seal up a 5-2 win for FSW. 

 

Lucio finished 3-4 with a triple and an RBI to lead the Bucs offense while Ortiz was 2-3 with a pair of RBIs and Medina was 2-4 with his 4th inning home run.  Wegielnik earned his third win of the season with another outstanding spot start, going seven innings and allowing just one earned run while striking out six to improve to 3-1 on the year.  Knowles earned his conference leading 11th save of the season with two perfect innings of relief to finish it out. 

 

FSW improves to 35-13 overall and 16-6 in Suncoast Conference play on the season where they will hold no less than a two game lead at the completion of Wednesday's games.  South Florida State falls to 19-27 overall and 6-16 in league action with the loss. 

 

The same two teams will hook up again on Friday in Avon Park for game two of the series with first pitch scheduled for 6 PM.