Demon Baseball | 3/26/2018 2:32:00 PM

BEAUMONT, Texas – Facing teams twice a season in mid-week action is not unexpected for the Northwestern State baseball team.
 
The Demons already have completed home-and-home series this season with Louisiana Tech and UL Monroe, but Tuesday's 6 p.m. matchup with Lamar at Vincent-Beck Stadium opens a bit of a unique season series for Northwestern State.
 
The mid-week matchup is the first of three meetings between the Southland Conference members, who will play all three games as mid-week, non-conference games. The teams were scheduled to play three mid-week games in 2017, but rain forced the cancellation of one of the games in Natchitoches.
 
"It just makes sense," second-year head coach Bobby Barbier said. "There a couple of hours down the road. Scheduling mid-week games is not an easy thing. It's not easy for a whole lot of teams to get in here. We talked about it. We were still going to play each other this year and last year during the mid-week. Originally, one of these were going to be a double mid-week (Tuesday and Wednesday), but we decided to make it three separate ones."
 
Both the Demons (12-11) and Cardinals (5-19) are coming off series losses this past weekend as Northwestern State dropped two of three to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi while Lamar had the same result against Incarnate Word.
 
NSU has dropped four of five games since a 6-2 win against Nebraska on March 17.
 
"I still like our team," Barbier said. "There's no panic. There's nothing we need to do a whole lot differently. We just need to tighten some areas up, like on the mound. I like how our offense is coming along, getting better throughout the year. I'm excited to see where we go from here."
 
Senior first baseman David Fry, the Louisiana Sports Writers Association's Hitter of the Week, leads Northwestern State with a .380 average. In four games this past week, Fry batted .375 with two home runs, four RBIs and a 1.285 OPS.
 
He homered in back-to-back at-bats against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, starting the game-winning rally Saturday with a leadoff home run in the ninth inning before adding a two-run shot in the first inning Sunday.
 
After Northwestern State did not have a hitter record a double-figure hitting streak in 2017, the Demons have had three do so in the first 23 games this season, including Fry's career-long 11-game run from Feb. 18-March 9.
 
J.P. Lagreco's current 13-game hitting streak is the longest for a Demon this season and the longest by a Northwestern State hitter since Bret Underwood's 13-game run from May 1-21, 2016. Shortstop Caleb Ricca's career-long 12-game hit streak was NSU's third double-figure run this season.

Lamar finds itself in a similar situation to the Demons, having dropped 10 of its past 11 games.
 
"They're playing a lot of young guys, and that's what happens," Barbier said. "They tend to grow up as the season goes along, like we did last year when we were playing six freshmen at times. I don't put a lot of stock into the numbers. For us this is another opportunity to compete against a different color jersey. We enjoy going down to Lamar. It's a nice place to play, and we get a lot of kids from that area. It's nice for their parents to be able to come and see them."
 
The Demons are expected to start right-hander Jerry Maddox (1-2, 3.57) against Lamar right-hander Jace Campbell (0-3, 3.60). Maddox will make the start 47 miles from his hometown of Dayton, Texas.