NATCHITOCHES – The Northwestern State baseball team continues its eight-game home stand when it hosts Lamar for a three-game series that starts on Friday night at 6:30 in Brown-Stroud Field.
 
Saturday's game is scheduled for 4:00, and Sunday's game is set for 1 o'clock. Friday and Sunday's contests of the series can be heard on 100.7 KZBL in Natchitoches on NSUDemons.com by live stream.
 
The Demons (11-27, 2-10 Southland Conference) go into the set off of two midweek loses to Louisiana Tech and Louisiana-Lafayette.  Lamar (27-11, 6-6 SLC) defeated former Southland Conference member Texas-San Antonio 4-0 on Wednesday.
 
Cody Butler (2-2, 4.81 ERA) is expected to get the start on the mound in Friday night's game, and Steven Spann (2-2, 2.41) will get his first start of the season in Saturday's game.
 
Lamar is expected to start Jonathan Dziedzic (5-1, 2.93) on Friday, Eric Harrington (5-1, 2.64) on Saturday, and David Carver (5-3, 3.97) will start Sunday.
 
Will Watson leads the Demons in hitting with a .310 batting average and 17 runs batted in for the season.  Todd Wallace (.316) and Nick Purdy (.306) are the team leaders in batting average in conference games.
 
Darian Johnson (.397), Sam Bumpers (.343), V.J. Bunner (.336), Jude Vidrine (.314), and Seth Dornak (.304) all have batting averages above .300 for the Cardinals.  Johnson leads the team in RBI with 30.
 
The Demons do not have a midweek game on the schedule after Lamar, and will take on Sam Houston at home on April 26 to round out the eight-game home stand.