MADISON, Wisc.—In just the second doubleheader of the year, Willmar fared much the same as the first, splitting the two games with the Mallards.

The first game was an offensive show in a 7-6 Stingers win while the second game ended up a pitchers’ duel with only seven combined hits in the Mallards 5-0 victory.

Willmar fell behind right away in the first game with the visiting Mallards tallying a run in the top of the first inning. However, the Stingers countered with a two-run bottom of the first and never relinquished the lead. Then in the bottom of the second inning Willmar added three more runs for its starter AJ Puckett to make it a 5-1 lead and give him plenty to work with.

That was more than enough for Puckett and he went the distance in the seven-inning affair to pick up his first complete game and his first win of the season as well. Madison made a game of it in the seventh inning with three runs to cut the deficit to just one but Puckett got a deep fly-out to left field to end the game. Dan Motl had his second home run of the game in the bottom of the sixth for the Stingers and Jack Ross had three hits including his third big fly of the year and finished with three RBI.

Game two was much quieter for both sides and the starters, Brady Anderson for the Stingers and Rob McDonnell for the Mallards, held the opposing bats scoreless for the first two innings. Madison (29-21 overall, 11-6 second half) eventually tallied their first run off Anderson in the bottom of the third and that was all it ended up needing to win. The Mallards tacked on another four runs in the bottom of the fourth to make it a 5-0 lead, which held up as the final margin.

The Stingers (32-15, 10-7) were in danger of getting no-hit by McDonnell but Ross and Nick Rivera had hits in the seventh inning to prevent that from occurring.

The 2014 season is presented by Charter. For more coverage of the Stingers visit the West Central Tribune’s website at www.wctrib.com.

Tonight’s Center for Diagnostic Imaging player of the game was Jack Ross. CDI is your local medical imaging provider. It’s your choice where you go for medical imaging, for MRI, CT, mammograms and pain injections, choose CDI. Visit online at myCDI.com/CentralMN.