BATON ROUGE – It has been six years since the Northwestern State baseball has played at Southern's Lee-Hines Field.
 
Significantly less time has passed since the Demons and Jaguars played – 31 days to be exact.
 
For the third time this season, the state rivals will meet, this time on Southern's home turf for a 6 p.m. Wednesday matchup in Louisiana's capital city.
 
The teams split a Feb. 24 doubleheader at Brown-Stroud Field. The Demons took game one, 13-6, before the Jaguars held on for a 7-5 victory in the nightcap.
 
"We beat them pretty good in the first game here (on Feb. 24), but they came out and played really well in the second game," third-year head coach Bobby Barbier said. "I think they scored in double figures every game this weekend. We definitely expect a good fight down there Wednesday."
 
The Demons (12-9) bring some momentum with them into Wednesday's matchup, which can be heard through live streaming audio on www.NSUDemons.com.
 
Northwestern State battled back after losing Friday's game against Lamar to grab consecutive wins and capture their second straight Southland Conference series win. Doing so with a short-handed roster because of the flu highlighted contributions up and down the roster.
 
"We had a lot of guys who had a good day offensively (Sunday)," Barbier said. "Austin Townsend had been scuffling a little bit, and he had three good at-bats. Austin Stegall was good and, obviously, Larson Fontenot. Hopefully, we can use that moving forward and take it into the game at Southern."
 
The Jaguars entered Tuesday night's game at New Orleans at 14-9 and on a three-game win streak after a weekend sweep of Grambling at Lee-Hines Field. The Jaguars scored 46 runs in the three-game sweep.
 
Entering Tuesday's matchup with the Privateers, the Jaguars were hitting .300 as a team, averaging better than five runs per game.
 
"They're a really good team," Barbier said. "They played Lamar really well at Lamar last week."
 
The Demons will start left-hander Tyler Pigott (2-1, 4.82) against the Jaguars after typical mid-week starter Cullen McDonald was called into action Sunday with Northwestern State facing a shortage of arms because of the flu outbreak.
 
"We'll probably staff it for the most part," Barbier said of the Demons' pitching plans for Wednesday night. "Cullen has been our mid-week starter, but we had to use him Sunday. A lot of those guys (who missed this weekend) will hopefully be back, and it will be good to get them back in the swing of things."