BATON ROUGE – The Northwestern State baseball team's pitching staff has been a driving force behind the Demons' best start since the 2010 season.
 
Northwestern State has won nine of its first 11 games for the first time in 10 years as it resumes its in-state rivalry with Southern at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Lee-Hines Field on the Southern campus.
 
The Demons carry a 1.82 team earned run average into their second straight road mid-week matchup. That mark leads the Southland Conference and ranks sixth nationally. Following a simple tenet has allowed the Demons to position themselves among the national leaders.
 
"We are still early in the process of building our staff," said fourth-year head coach Bobby Barbier, who doubles as the NSU pitching coach. "Roles are starting to be developed but, more importantly, guys have been attacking the strike zone, and we need to continue to do that."
 
Northwestern State has tossed three shutouts in its first 11 games, placing them fourth among all Division I programs, two behind national leader Duke. A season ago, the Demons spun six shutouts.
 
Redshirt freshman right-hander Nik Millsap (0-0, 0.00) is scheduled to make his second career start. In his first, Millsap worked four scoreless innings in the second game of Northwestern State's doubleheader sweep of North Alabama on Feb. 22. Southern will counter with left-hander Jerome Bohannon (0-1, 14.14).
 
Millsap will be tasked with slowing a Southern offense that averages a touch less than six runs per game. In a weekend sweep of SWAC rival Prairie View A&M, the Jaguars (5-6) tallied 29 runs, outscoring the Panthers 29-7.
 
Tuesday night's matchup will be Southern's home opener as the Jaguars have played seven road games and four neutral-site games, all of which came in the Andre Dawson Classic in New Orleans on opening weekend.
 
The Jaguars find themselves in much the same situation the Demons did a season ago after an unexpected run to the NCAA Regionals.
 
Southern and Northwestern State resumed their rivalry in 2019 after a five-year break, playing three games. The teams split a pair of games in Natchitoches in February before the Demons clinched the season series with a mid-week win in Baton Rouge.
 
While the Demons saw an 18-win increase from 2017 to 2018, the Jaguars improved by a stunning 23 wins as coach Kerrick Jackson's team went from 9-32 in his first season to 32-24 in his second.
 
"Kerrick has done a great job over there," Barbier said. "That is a school with great tradition that he has brought back. It will be a tough test for our team."