BRISTOL, Conn. — The emotional high Falmouth experienced after Friday’s walk-off victory didn’t carry over to Saturday night’s game against Fairfield, Connecticut, in the New England Little League baseball regionals.

Fairfield scored three runs before a batter was retired and beat Falmouth 10-0 in a game stopped after five innings because of the 10-run mercy rule.

Despite the outcome, Maine Manager Matt Rogers couldn’t fault his team’s effort.

“I gauge them on five things – hitting, pitching, defense, baserunning and the most important one is the thumb, which is character and attitude,” Rogers said. “That was the best game we’ve played (attitude-wise).

“Obviously we had adversity from the get-go, facing a great team, but our kids battled and they never put their chins down.”

On Friday, Alex Smith’s two-run homer with two outs in the bottom of the sixth gave Falmouth a 3-2 victory against Goffstown, New Hampshire.

But one day later, Falmouth fell into a 4-0 hole before it came to bat and couldn’t recover.

Michael Simonds had two of Falmouth’s three hits off Jamie Flink, who went the distance for Fairfield, which has won its first two games in the pool portion of the regional.

“I definitely think that was one of my best performances,” Flink said.

“I think I had pretty good command tonight and I just tried to keep the players of Maine off balance. They’re a really good hitting team so I knew I had to be careful.”

The loss dropped Falmouth to 1-1 in the tournament and likely needing to do no worse than split its remaining two games in pool play to advance.

The top four of the six New England state winners move on to the single-elimination semifinals next weekend.

Falmouth plays its third game in three days at 2 p.m. Sunday against Williston, Vermont, then gets a day off to visit ESPN on Monday before concluding pool play Tuesday against Barnstable, Massachusetts.

“I said coming into the tournament it would be great to win a game and we won one (on Friday),” Rogers said. “Played a great team today and we lost, and we get two more games.

“I wish we got a run so we could have played another inning on the beautiful field on a beautiful night.”

Maine starter Sam Manganello gave up all four runs in the first but wasn’t hit hard. Fairfield got only one ball out of the infield in the inning.

After an error on the first batter, Fairfield used four singles, a bases-loaded walk and a groundout to score its four runs.

“It changes the whole complexion of the first inning if you get one out with nobody on versus no outs and a man on,” Rogers said.

Fairfield extended its lead to 6-0 in the third on P.J. Egan’s run-scoring double and Brian Kiremidjian’s single that drove in another.

Fairfield added two runs in the fourth before Vince Camera’s two-run single in the fifth gave it the margin sufficient for a mercy-rule win.

Fairfield committed no errors and finished with 13 hits against three Falmouth pitchers.

Simonds worked three innings in relief of Manganello and Quinn Jackson tossed the fifth for Falmouth.

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