Warren Central learned an important life lesson Tuesday night.

When you go toe to toe with a heavyweight, it helps if you don’t punch yourself in the mouth.

The Vikings committed a pair of two-out errors that staked Desoto Central to an early lead, and then the Jaguars scored five runs in the seventh inning to blow it open and won 8-1 in Game 1 of a Class 6A quarterfinal series at Viking Field.

“We’ve just got to make the plays,” Warren Central coach Conner Douglas said. “It was a snowball effect. The heart of the order doesn’t come back up in the seventh if we get those outs. We had to face six extra batters, throw 30 extra pitches. Taft’s (Nesmith) pitch count got up and that’s when his command started suffering a little bit.”

Game 2 of the best-of-three series is Thursday at 6 p.m. at Desoto Central.

Warren Central (17-11) gained some confidence by hanging with last year’s Class 6A runner-up in the opener, but knows it needs to clean up the mistakes to bring the series back home for a deciding Game 3 on Friday.

“I take it as a good thing, because we know we can compete with some of the best teams in the state. We can use that as motivation or take it as a slap in the face. We take it as motivation,” Warren Central center fielder Marcus Ragan said. “You make five or six errors, it makes it harder for you to win. We just have to limit the errors and we’re right there with them.”

Desoto Central (23-8) had 10 hits in Game 1, including six that went for extra bases. Mississippi State signee Austin Riley hit a two-run home run — his 11th of the season — and Hayden Tapper had a two-run double.

Riley also pitched six innings, allowing four hits and one run while striking out nine. A host of scouts were on hand to see the hard-throwing right-hander whose fastball topped out at 93 mph.

In the first four innings, Warren Central only hit one ball out of the infield. Some of the early struggles came from the Vikings’ approach of swinging at fastballs early in the count. They made contact, but didn’t do much with it. Five of their first nine outs came on the first or second pitch of an at-bat.

“We wanted to be aggressive. He’s a good pitcher. That’s why you saw a hundred scouts back there. He’s the best in the state, we knew he was going to be around the zone, so we got in there and competed,” Douglas said.

Despite Desoto’s strong effort, it was the Vikings who did more to bring about their own demise than Riley or any of the other Jaguars.

With two outs in the first inning, third baseman Logan Stewart bobbled a grounder to keep the inning going. Tapper followed with a two-run double to right field to give Desoto a 2-0 lead.

In the fourth inning, Colin Coates singled with two outs and stole second. Another grounder to Stewart resulted in a throwing error, allowing Coates to score to make it 3-0.

Warren Central got a run back in the bottom of the fourth. Marcus Ragan reached on an infield single, stole second, went to third on a ground out and scored on another ground out by Brooks Boolos.

Pitcher Taft Nesmith gave up a few hits, but worked out of trouble each time to keep the Vikings in the game. Nesmith gave up 10 hits and eight runs — only three earned — in 6 2/3 innings. He didn’t walk a batter and struck out six.

“There’s not enough words in the English language to tell how proud I am of (Nesmith),” Douglas said. “He’s absolutely a war daddy. I’ll go to war with him any day. He pitched his tail off and didn’t deserve to lose. I hate that it goes in the score column as his loss, because he did not deserve to lose that game.”

Nesmith, who threw 113 pitches, tired after getting the first out in the seventh and Desoto Central started raking his pitches into the outfield.

Back-to-back doubles brought in a run, then Riley crushed a ball over the center field wall to put Desoto up 6-1.

The Vikings committed three more errors in the inning that led to two more runs — one was a wild throw by catcher Tyler McRight on a dropped third strike — as the Jaguars iced the game.

The late rally, Riley said, should give Desoto some momentum heading into Game 2.

“That’s going to be huge. That gives us another step on the ladder to putting them out,” Riley said.