MADISON, Wisc.–After falling short in the first of Friday's two games with the Mallards, the Stingers pitching staff rebounded with a strong outing and shut out Madison 4-0 to split the two twin bills down the middle.

In game number one Madison (30-22 overall, 11-7 second half) jumped out to a quick lead which it never lost the rest of the way in an 8-2 win. Trailing 3-2 in the bottom of the fourth, Willmar (33-16, 11-8) struck for two runs to bring the game within one, but that was the closest the Stingers would get the rest of the way, as the Mallards added four in the very next inning to increase the gap.

But after getting beat in game one, the Stingers came out resilient in game number two and took the lead from the get-go. Dan Motl led the second game off with a walk and then came all the way around to score following a walk to Hutton Moyer and an RBI single by Reagan Fowler. Willmar then added one more run each in the third and fifth innings to make it a bit more of a comfortable margin for starter Matt Geislinger.

The third inning run proved to be crucial as in the bottom of the fourth Geislinger ran into a bit of trouble. After he recorded the first out, Geislinger gave up a double and then two straight walks to load the bases. But then Will Lydon came on in relief and stoned the Mallards cold. Lydon got Will Krug to ground into a fielder's choice to force the lead runner at home and came back to get Alex Bacon to fly out to end the Mallards' best scoring opportunity of the night.

Lydon allowed two on in the fifth but came back to strike out the final two batters to end that threat and fanned the final batter in the sixth inning to strand a runner at second. The Mallards left the bases loaded on two different occasions in the loss. Tyler Cohen had two batters reach against him in the bottom of the seventh but got Drew Carlile to ground out to end the game.

The 2014 season is presented by Charter. For more coverage of the Stingers visit vww.wctrib.com.

Tonight’s Center for Diagnostic Imaging player of the game was Reagan Fowler. 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.