BATON ROUGE -- The Northwestern State baseball offense helped snap a six game skid when it beat Southern University 9-3 Wednesday night due in large part to the efforts of third baseman Ryan Westbrook who went 4-for-5 with three runs batted including a homerun.
 
Drew Helenihi, Nick Doughty, Will Watson, Nick Purdy, and Jordan Buckley each had mulit-hit games.
 
The Demons scored two or more runs in three different innings including three in the seventh and two in the ninth to help NSU to a decisive lead.
 
“Offensively we did a great job at the plate and on the bases,” said head J.P Davis. “Overall it was a very complete game.”
 
Westbrook opened the second inning with homer to left field followed by Helenihi reaching on an error, then stealing second base. 
 
Jordan Buckley doubled and scored Helenihi giving NSU two runs in the second that would eventually help the Demons to a 3-1 lead after two.
 
Ray Frias was walked to open the seventh inning and advanced to second after a Purdy groundout.  Hinojos singled down the right field line and scored Frias.
 
Hinojos then advance to third on a Doughty singled and scored on a base knock from Westbrook. 
 
Helenihi scored Doughty again on another single to right field to get the third and final run of the inning.
 
“The seventh inning was big for us because they threatened in the sixth loading the bases, but we showed we can come back from that and added some insurance.”
 
The ninth was just more for the Demons scoring the final two runs of the game when Doughty reached on an error and a Westbrook singled to right.  Both were scored on a Watson double to left field.
 
Watson opened up the game with a single followed by a grounder from Frias that advanced Watson to second.  Watson then stole the first of five bags for the Demons when he took third.
 
Purdy got the first run batted in for the game when he knocked in Watson on a groundout.
 
Jacob Williford got the ball to start the game for NSU and threw four innings giving up two runs on five hits and four strikeouts.
 
Williford ran into trouble in the fourth when he loaded the bases, but was able to strike out Jags shortstop Jeremy Lopez to end the inning.
 
Zach Winchester came in for the Demons and shut the door in the fifth inning, but loaded the bases in the sixth with two men out.
 
Joe Scanio was called in to help NSU out of the jam, and did giving Winchester the win.
 
“Winchester came in and did a great job keeping them down in the middle innings, and Scanio came in and shut the door completely to help us win the game.”
 
Scanio got the save pitching 3.1 innings giving up only one hit and an unearned run with seven strikeouts.
 
The Demons will open conference play this weekend in Brown-Stroud Field starting at 6:30 Friday night.