The Washington Demons picked up a road victory in girls’ basketball Friday night by beating their fierce rivals from Mount Pleasant 40-29. Washington came out red hot shooting the basketball, hitting four three-point shots in the first quarter to take a 16-11 lead.

The Demons cooled off in the second period, and found themselves actually down by a point at halftime, but hitting three more threes in the third quarter put them in front 34-24 headed into the final frame. From there, defense did the job to hang on for the victory, something that Washington head coach Shannon Rugg told KCII Sports after the game is becoming his team’s calling card.

“On the way down here,” Rugg said, “I was thinking [that] the first team to 40 [points] is probably going to win, and defense in the second half, if we would have got some rebounds, it would have really gotten out of hand. I’m proud of this group. They continue to work hard, and they want to get better, and we’re going to find ways to keep ourselves in games with the defense.”

Junior Kendall Hinrichsen had 11 points to lead the scoring for Washington, which is now 5-3 in the Southeast Conference and 8-7 overall. The Demon boys hung tough with the reigning conference champions for most of the night, leading Mount Pleasant 19-16 one quarter in and only trailing by four at the half.

But Washington couldn’t contain Panthers senior Payton Hagans, whose buzzer-beating triple at the end of the third quarter punctuated a night where he hit seven treys and scored a game-high 33 points to power Mount Pleasant.

The Panthers used a 12-1 run to start the final quarter and would pull away for a 71-54 victory. Washington got three three-pointers and a team-high 13 points from freshman Nic Stone, while junior Logan McDole also hit three shots from beyond the arc and finished with 11 points. Sophomore Kael Williams added 10 points scored, but it was not enough to keep the Demons from dropping to 4-4 in conference play and 6-8 overall.

While the Washington girls are in action this weekend against Oskaloosa, the next time both teams hit the court will be Monday when they return home for the annual rivalry battle with Mid-Prairie. You can hear the doubleheader between the Demons and the Golden Hawks Monday night on all KCII stations and streaming on KCIIradio.com, starting with pregame coverage at 5:30.