BEAUMONT, Texas – Northwestern State enters Thursday's road match with Lamar looking for two things to happen that will help it avoid a third.
 
Winners of three straight matches, the Demons (12-12, 8-5) officially clinched their spot in the Southland Conference Tournament that being in just three short weeks, but that doesn't mean there isn't plenty more to play for over the final five matches.
 
When the ball goes up on Thursday in Beaumont at 6 p.m. on ESPN+, the number one thing head coach Sean Kiracofe wants to see is a continuation of the team's performance over the past week. 
 
That may more likely resemble a one-A and one-B situation, however, as based on the earlier meeting between the two teams a month ago, a learn from previous experience match would also be a welcome sight.
 
"We're playing well so we want to stick with that," Kiracofe said. "But looking at Lamar both their outsides had amazing matches against us when they were here. They played well. We knew they were getting the ball and they still did it. We have to go out and put them in a position where they can't run in-system stuff to them and hopefully slow them down better than we did last time."
 
The Cardinals (1-22, 1-11) were winless on the season at the time of the first match and the Demons had just lost their first match in a month at Texas A&M-Commerce following a seven-match winning streak.
 
Lamar took the first and third sets and pushed the Demons through each of the final two sets before NSU ultimately pulled off the victory 3-2 in a lengthy battle. The Cardinals won every stat category in the match, except for aces, and were the first SLC team to out block the Demons.
 
Freshmen outside hitters Taisha Rhone and Lyric Jordan each set career highs with their first 20-kill matches of their careers, which each have since reset in Lamar's win at Nicholls, combining to attempt 135 of the 186 total swings in the match.
 
That knowledge and those match memories serve as plenty of motivation for the Demons to continue their .283 team attack percentage, more than 14 kills and two aces per set over the past three matches that would help avoid a potential trap game.
 
With looming matching against three of the top four teams in the SLC standings over the next two weeks, the Demons got a nice confidence boost in Tuesday's sweep of Commerce by doing it a different way.
 
With a season-low two blocks in the match for one of the nation's top blocking teams, the Demons were unphased by the lack of stops at the net thanks to the performance on the back row from Symone Wesley, Teresa Garza, setters Piper Boydstun and Amina Attra that were led by libero Ashyln Svoboda.
 
"Commerce has a bunch of players with big arms and I wanted to be able to defend and we did a great job of that," Kiracofe said. "Everyone in the back row, the setters, the all did a good job of being in their lanes and keeping those balls up. It's great to know that we can rely on them and it not just be that our block has to terminate the play."
 
Svoboda is third overall in the conference in digs per set at 4.34 and will all but certainly reach the 1,000 career dig mark in Thursday's match, needing just 10 to join the club in just her second full season as the Demon libero. Her roommate and best friend Garza, ranks eighth in the conference at 3.29 per set and has the most digs of any non-libero in the league with 283.
 
"As a team we are so diverse in different areas," Garza said. "We can play defense, hit the ball and of course get blocks. We're not going to get all three check marks every single night so being able to depend on different areas of our game is special."