The Washington Demon baseball took on conference rival Fairfield last night in a double-header that went over five and a half hours.

The Demons would take game one 6-3 behind strong pitching performances from Jacob Hall and Chase McDole and an offensive showing that notched 11 hits as a team.

Individually, Landon Hinkley led the way at the plate in game one, going a perfect 2-2 with an RBI. Brady Knutson went 3-4 with a run scored, and Wilx Witthoft launched his second homer of the year.

Game two was a shootout, with the lead changing hands or the game tying seven different times throughout. Fairfield got out to a 4-1 lead early, but four runs in the bottom of the fourth took the lead for the Demons. From there, it was back and forth scoring until the bitter end.

The Demons were down 11-8 going into the bottom of the seventh. Brant Stout reached on a walk and took second uncontested, Cade Hennigan advanced him on a groundout, and Luke Turner drove him in on an RBI single to left field. Turner would advance to second on the throw, and Witthoft was hit by a pitch right after that. As a result, the Demons had two runners on with one out for Brady Knutson.

Knutson drilled a grounder right to the Trojan third baseman Hoskins, who stepped on the bag to get Turner and threw out Knutson for a double play to end the game by a score of 11-9.

Despite the loss in game two, head coach Nathan Miller says he was happy with the way his team looked all night long.

“Offensively, we did a great job.  We put a lot of quality at-bats together, we ran the bases well, we put a lot of pressure on them and, for the most part we played solid d, and that’s why we won [game one],” Miller said.  “Our guys battled all night; this was definitely a battle of two really good teams.  The last one came down to the wire as well, but I’m proud of our guys and the way they battled all night long.”

The split moves Washington back to a game back on Fairfield for the top spot in the Southeastern Conference at 7-3 in conference play, and moves their overall record to 12-6. Their next action will come tomorrow night when they travel to Williamsburg to take them on in a single game. We’ll have coverage of that one on 106.1 FM KCII, with the Washington HyVee Pregame Show starting at 6:30 and a 7:00 first pitch.