LAKE CHARLES – The Northwestern State volleyball team put itself in position to take an early stranglehold against McNeese on Saturday morning.
 
Instead, the Cowgirls outlasted the Lady Demons in the first two sets, establishing the tone for a 3-0 (26-24, 25-23, 25-18) sweep of Northwestern State in both teams' regular-season finale.
 
"Hat's off to McNeese," fourth-year head coach Sean Kiracofe said. "They played really well and fought the entire match. We were not at our best today, but we were still in a position to win sets one and two. Take away a few unforced errors, and we're up 2-0, but McNeese took advantage of our mistakes."
 
Northwestern State (12-14, 8-8) saw its three-match win streak come to an end and put it in a four-way tie for the final four spots in next week's Southland Conference Tournament, which will take place in Prather Coliseum.
 
The Lady Demons held a 24-22 lead in the opening set before the Cowgirls (10-21, 8-8) took advantage of a pair of attack errors to close out the set by scoring the final four points.
 
McNeese built on that momentum , taking an 11-6 lead and forcing a Northwestern State timeout.
 
The break seemed to energize the Lady Demons, who rattled off a quick three-point burst. McNeese rebuilt a five-point lead later in the set before Northwestern State cut the lead to one on three different occasions. Keegan Nelms then delivered one of her match-high 13 kills to secure the set.
 
The third set played out in much the same way except the Lady Demons could not string together the small scoring rallies they did in the second set.
 
Hannah Brister paced the Northwestern State offense with 12 kills while Alexis Warren added 11. Brister also led the Lady Demons with 13 digs while Warren added 12 as NSU saw its three-match win streak end.
 
"We were fortunate enough to have a lot of situations go our way to close out the regular season with five-set wins with some comebacks mixed in," Kiracofe said. "I'll take the sting from this loss as a nice motivator to be productive this week before our first-round match on Friday."
 
Northwestern State awaits the announcement of the Southland Conference's tiebreaker scenarios to learn its first-round opponent in Friday's conference tournament quarterfinals. Stephen F. Austin is the tournament's top seed with Central Arkansas slotted at No. 2. Sam Houston State and Abilene Christian round out the top four seeds.