WINFIELD — For the first five innings of Friday’s playoff series against Winfield, Hanceville couldn’t have played better baseball.

Then, with just one swing of the bat, it all came crumbling down.

The Pirates received a clutch two-out, two-run single from Cody Roberts in the bottom of the sixth inning to escape Game 1 with a 2-1 triumph over the Bulldogs. The home team parlayed the tight win into a 10-0 victory in the nightcap to sweep Hanceville from the playoffs for the second straight season.

Roberts’ hot shot was the lone blemish for senior ace Hayden Loggins, who allowed just two hits and struck out three batters in his final start as a member of the Purple and Gold.

“I wouldn’t trade anybody for anybody,” an emotional Loggins said. “We played such a great game that first one. It was a tough way to lose, and it made the next one a whole lot tougher.”

Added senior teammate Isaac Hardin: “We just lost momentum for that second game. We had it going and one hit changed it all. Hayden was great. We could have come back and played better, but we just didn’t. We didn’t play like we’re supposed to or how we’re used to. That one little thing just changed everything for the rest of the night.”

Hardin put the Bulldogs on the scoreboard first with an RBI single in the third inning that scored Isaac Weissend from second base.

It looked, for all intents and purposes, like that’d be enough for Loggins.

He retired batter after batter until the sixth inning, when he gave up his first hit of the day — a bang-bang play at first — and issued a two-out walk on a borderline pitch to load the bases for Winfield to set the stage for the Pirates’ No. 5 hitter.

The rest is history.

“It took a lot of wind out of us,” Hanceville coach Michael Chandler said. “We were on top of them for the whole game and then it slipped away. That’s baseball, though. Hayden pitched probably his best game of the year and deserved to win. But that’s playoff baseball. Every play matters.”

Any chance Chandler’s group had of sending the series to a tiebreaker was washed away with a three-run third inning by Winfield in Game 2. The Pirates followed with two more in the fourth, fifth and seventh innings to easily seal the deal at home.

Hardin, Weissend (both three) and Loggins (two) had the only base knocks for the Bulldogs, who were for the most part shut down by Pirate pitchers Jake Eltows and Kyle Nixon (eight hits, five walks and 15 K’s).

“We had a great week of preparation,” Chandler said. “We prepared to win these two games. We played our hearts out in that first game but couldn’t get some timely hits. We were two even teams. We just couldn’t adjust. Their guys threw it well.”

While the loss is likely to sting for a while, both Loggins and Hardin know that — as two of eight seniors — they’ve left the program in much better shape than it was a few years ago.

This season alone, the Dawgs set team records in wins (23) and team ERA. They also reached the top spot in Class 3A for the first time in program history, didn’t lose a home game and made the second round of the postseason for just the second instance since 2005.

“Nobody even knew who we were a few years ago,” Loggins said. “They’d say, ’Hanceville, who’s that?’ Now we have everyone talking about us. That’s a real great feeling for me. We put our heart and soul into this program. I’ll never forget that.”

Hardin shared similar sentiments.

“I’ll remember everyone on this team,” he said. “We came from losing every game to winning most of them. From seventh grade until now, we’ve worked so hard to get to this position. We hit, we run and we practiced every day to get here. We’ve built the foundation and, hopefully, the younger guys know now how hard they’ll have to work to get back to this point again.”

For Chandler, Friday’s loss is no doubt a bittersweet moment.

Bitter in defeat but sweet in a proud remembrance of the eight seniors he’s seen grow into good baseball players and better young men — Hardin, Loggins, Austin Coker, Christian James, Dant’e Reese, Noah Davis, Griffin Brown and Alex Armstrong.

While he’ll know doubt miss their presence next season, the sixth-year coach is grateful for the hard work and sacrifice laid down by the unit over the past few years.

“Those guys set the bar high,” Chandler said. “They’re going to be tough to replace. But I’ll tell you this, the kids in these Bulldog uniforms are the reason I love getting up in the morning and coming to school and being their coach. We’re building a program. We’ll be back here. There’s no doubt in my mind.”