After a winter holiday break, the Washington Demons make their return to the basketball court tonight when they host Fairfield in a Southeast Conference doubleheader that you can hear on KCII. The Washington girls are off to one of their best starts to a season in years, winning five of their first eight games. Senior forward Alex Murphy is almost averaging a double-double with just under 11 points and nine rebounds per game, while freshmen Adalyn Long and Leighton Messinger have provided a scoring boost by combining to pour in almost 20 points per contest. But Demons head coach Shannon Rugg tells KCII Sports that there are some key areas that a young team needs to address to take another step forward.

“We’re putting ourselves in a position to play against some really good competition and compete with them,” Rugg says, “and now we’ve got to take that next step and win some of those games that we may not think we should be winning yet. That’s stuff we’ve got to work on. It’s a mentality of ‘we’re expected to win some games here.'”

Washington already has a convincing 62-32 victory over the Fairfield Trojans earlier this season and will look for the series sweep for the first time since 2014. In the boys’ game, a pair of of 4-4 teams collide. Washington needs a win to remain in a tie for first place in the Southeast. The Demons have leaned on the scoring prowess of senior Ethan Patterson, who is putting up better than 17 points a game, as well as strong inside play from senior Ajay Six with an average of almost 12 points and six rebounds. Head coach Collin Stark says his guys are still trying to find the right chemistry, but they are in position for a breakthrough.

“I think with this group, going into the year, we knew that we did lose quite a bit from last year’s team,” Stark says. “But we have a lot of very good basketball players. It’s just how are we going to mesh together. You can tell as the year got going, you could see that improvement as we went on of just getting more and more comfortable with where guys are going to be defensively [and] offensively, and getting more acquainted with how each person plays.”

The Demons have won the last seven meetings with the Trojans. Washington tries to pick up a pair of conference wins against Fairfield, and you can hear all the action on 106.1 FM KCII. Coverage begins with the Washington HyVee Pregame Show this evening at 5:30.