NATCHITOCHES – The final tune up before Southland Conference play begins Wednesday for Northwestern State volleyball.
 
The Lady Demons (6-5) host Prairie View A&M (0-11) in their final home, non-conference match of the season, with a chance to sweep their four scheduled SWAC opponents.
 
Streaming video of Wednesday's 1 p.m. match from Prather Coliseum is available on www.nsudemons.comand through Northwestern State Athletics mobile app, which can be downloaded free through the Apple Store of Google Play.
 
The match is the annual Elementary School Day, where students and teachers from the Northwestern State Elementary Lab School get to watch the Lady Demons play.
 
A week ago, the Lady Demons enjoyed a 3-0 sweep of Grambling, their eighth straight home opening win, before playing in the toughest tournament of their season at Texas A&M. NSU went 0-3 in College Station, falling in straight sets each time.
 
Despite the difficulty of the opponents, coach Sean Kiracofe still saw things he was pleased with from the Lady Demons.
 
"I thought we played well for the most part," Kiracofe said. "In every one of those matches we had a chance to take a set and push it into four. We had a lot of great individual performances and some good runs where we were forcing good teams to adjust to us. I take that as a compliment but now it's about putting that together and pushing those matches to four and getting some wins."
 
Junior outside hitter Hannah Brister had another stellar week offensively for the Lady Demons. She totaled 56 kills and a .299 hitting percentage, earning her a second Southland Offensive Player of the Week award, along with her third all-tournament selection this season. She leads the SLC in offense and ranks 11^thnationally in total kills and 13^thin kills per set.
 
Wednesday's opponent, Prairie View A&M, enters the week with a deceiving 0-11 record. The Panthers have lost four matches that went the full five sets, including two against SLC schools Sam Houston State and Abilene Christian.
 
Their top offensive threats are Victoria Pearson, CeTara Carter and Tamaira Armstrong, who have well over half of the team's kills among them. Each player is averaging better than two kills per set on the year. 
 
"Prairie View is much improved," Kiracofe said. "They're going to tough and we can't look forward into the weekend. It's always a fun match for us because we bring the elementary school over to cheer for us so it's loud and crazy in there, whether we're playing or not.
 
They have a lot of fun with it, our girls have a lot of fun with it, and we enjoy doing it on a yearly basis. We think that's going to give us a nice little push to take the match, but it's definitely not something that we can just sleepwalk through."
 
Stay connected to NSU volleyball by following @NSUDemonsVB on Twitter and Instagram or by liking Northwestern State volleyball on Facebook.