The new season of high school girls’ basketball began for the Washington Demons last night with a road defeat, as Washington fell 51-37 at Muscatine. The Demons hung tough early on, trailing by nine points at the end of the first quarter and at halftime. But Muscatine used a 16-8 run to start the second half to pull away for good. After the game, Washington head coach Shannon Rugg told KCII Sports that, despite the loss, he thinks his team proved they will be a tough out every game.

“We knew coming in that we were going to struggle against the press,” Rugg said. “We haven’t worked a ton against it yet. It is a situation [where] it’s things that we’re going to get better at, and I think we’re a lot better team, and we’re going to show a lot of people that we’re going to show up and compete and you’re going to have to work to beat us.”

Sophomore Addison Miller scored a team-high 12 points for the Demons, while junior Kendall Hinrichsen had eight points off the bench and sophomore Adalyn Long added seven. Washington will be off until Tuesday night when they play their first home game of the season against Albia. You can catch all the action starting with the pregame show Tuesday evening at 5:30 on 106.1 FM KCII.