NATCHITOCHES – The Northwestern State volleyball team will be a busy group during the final week of the 2018 regular season.
 
Starting Tuesday evening in Prather Coliseum, the Lady Demons begin a run of three matches in five days to close out the regular season, and they will do so against three familiar faces.
 
Northwestern State (10-13, 6-7) opens that run with a 5:30 p.m. Tuesday home match against Southeastern Louisiana (2-24, 1-12) that will serve as the opener of a "Bump, Set and Slam" doubleheader with the Northwestern State men's basketball team.
 
Video of the match can be streamed at www.NSUDemons.com/watch or through the new Northwestern State Athletics mobile app, which is available to download through Google Play or the Apple Store.
 
The Lady Demons swept Southeastern Louisiana on Oct. 27 in Hammond and will try to pick up a season sweep of the Lady Lions for the first time since 2013.
 
"We'll be on top of what we need to do from a match standpoint," fourth-year head coach Sean Kiracofe said of the busy week. "Hopefully we can keep things going."
 
Northwestern State has won two of its past three matches, starting with that sweep of Southeastern Louisiana, and sits in seventh place in the conference standings, a half-game ahead of three teams in an eighth-place tie.
 
Thanks to a five-set win against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on Saturday, the Lady Demons control their conference tournament destiny. NSU hosts the 2018 Southland Conference Tournament from Nov. 16-18 in Prather Coliseum.
 
"There's a huge matchup (Tuesday) with HBU and Corpus that's going to have some big implications on how things settle out with the standings," Kiracofe said. "We've had some success against these teams the last three times we matched up with them. It's a matter of maintaining focus and being consistent with what we do."
 
Southeastern Louisiana has dropped seven straight matches, but the Lady Lions have taken sets from Sam Houston State, Abilene Christian, Southern Miss and Houston Baptist in that stretch.
 
"They've had some changes in the program, so it could be a completely different team we see Tuesday," Kiracofe said. "I would hope with just a day or so to prepare or change things up, I would hope they wouldn't be great at anything new they try to do, but it's definitely a possibility of things being different."
 
Tuesday's match marks the final regular-season home match for five NSU seniors – Channing Burleson, Madeline Drake, Victoria Harris, Reagan Rogers and Kathryn Wristen. The quintet was honored prior to Saturday's 3-2 victory against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and got key contributions from all five members, highlighted by a 12-kill, .611 hitting percentage match from Rogers, who also delivered four consecutive aces in the third set.
 
"It worked out great," Kiracofe said. "Everyone got to go in and provide value to the match. We talked about it and hoped it would work out and luckily it did."