NATCHITOCHES – Northwestern State returns to Prather Coliseum this week to finish a stretch of three consecutive challenging matches.
 
The Lady Demons (6-12, 0-3) take on Houston Baptist (12-5, 3-0) on Thursday night, the second a three straight matches against the top three teams in the conference standings. It will be Greek Night at Prather Coliseum with house competitions throughout the match.
 
Admission is free and all fans are required to adhere to the campus clear bag policy and encouraged to wear masks while inside the arena. First serve is set for 6:30 p.m. with live subscription video available at www.nsudemons.com, or on the NSU Athletics mobile app, a free download via either the Apple or Google stores.
 
Against the preseason favorite Texas A&M-Corpus Christi this past weekend, the Lady Demons created opportunities for success early in the match, taking the initial lead and staying within a point of the Islanders late in the set.
 
Unfortunately, those opportunities weren't as available after the 25-19 first-set loss leading to another frustrating result. Those are the moments however that head coach Sean Kiracofe continues to build on, adding more and more experience to a developing roster.
 
"We were able to create the matchups that we wanted at the beginning of the match and follow a game plan to create some things we wanted," Kiracofe said. "It just didn't turn into points. It did early on, but it came down to execution or long rallies where we ended up not winning the point. As frustrating as that is there's still a silver lining to it that we did better things."
 
The Lady Demons face their next challenge on Thursday night against another talented opponent in HBU, picked to finish second at the start of the season and sit tied atop the standings with Corpus after the first two weekends or conference play.
 
NSU created successful matchups against the quality of the Islanders. One matchup in Thursday's affair with HBU that will play an important role is blocking. Both the Demons and Huskies present quality, physical and consistent blocks on their sides of the net.
 
HBU currently leads the conference with an impressive 2.75 per set average and has the top three ranked players in the Southland in blocks per set led by the senior stalwart Ebonie Ballesteros' 1.30 per set.
 
"Houston Baptist has always been a very disciplined, good blocking team," Kiracofe said. "They're very physical at the net and consistent with it. That makes it so much easier for them to play defense around it because they know if you hit into the block something good is going to happen for them and they take big chunks of the court away to make it easier to defend."
 
The Lady Demons average one block less per set that HBU but regularly provide touches allowing the NSU back line a chance to collect digs.
 
Jaylibeth Garcia-Rosa, Audrey Quesnel and Reagan Lee, the NSU middles, along with their rotating pin blockers will not only have to provide solid opposition at the net but also contend with a varied Huskie attack throughout the night.
 
The Huskies have five players averaging better than two kills per set, with Ballesteros coming in just under that at 1.96. Add in an aggressive setter, Ellie Wipf, who runs the show and leads the conference in assists and the NSU defense will be on high alert the entire match.
 
"They've had some injuries so they're not necessarily playing with the lineup they expected to have this year, but it hasn't hurt them," Kiracofe said. "It's kind of forced them to spread the ball around offensively in a positive and negative way. 
 
"They've got a couple of young players in the middle and the outside where they were expecting some experienced players. If they had the lineup they were expecting it would be a little more unbalanced because that's who they'd be giving the ball, but because that isn't there they've had to spread it out and done a good job with it."