NATCHITOCHES – One of the more famous sports sayings is "big players make big plays in big games." As Northwestern State begins the final two weeks of the season it will look for that adage to hold true.
 
The Demons (13-12, 9-5) currently sit in a tie for fourth in the Southland Conference standings with four matches remaining and begin the final stretch of the season facing the team they are currently tied with in the standings, HCU.
 
First serve of the match is set for 6:30 p.m. and will air on ESPN+ and serve as senior night for three Demon volleyball players – Piper Boydstun, La'Treva Kennedy and Symone Wesley.
 
Over the final four matches of the season the Demons will face three of the top four teams in the conference starting with the Huskies on Thursday. They face McNeese on Saturday in a magnified Homecoming match and then travel to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi next Thursday.
 
The run up against the top teams in the standings begins with the Huskies as the Demons look to improve their position in the conference tournament to potentially earn a first-round bye.
 
"When we went down to their place we came out and played really well, both teams played well," head coach Sean Kiracofe said about the first meeting between the Demons and Huskies a month ago. "We were doing a lot of good things and then had some issues from an injury standpoint and that disrupted everything going into the second set. 
 
"We were able to gather ourselves for the third set and push that one close at the end and felt like we competed well without being at full strength. Now we are feeling pretty good and so it's a big match that we're looking forward to and have usually done a great job of playing well the second time we see a team we've lost to."
 
The Demons avenged their loss at Texas A&M-Commerce with a 3-0 sweep of the Lions last week in their first opportunity against a team they lost to earlier in the season.
 
They enter the week on a four-match winning streak, the second longest of the season, with their best attack percentage over a span of that length all season. NSU has hit .225 of better in each of the previous four seasons and have a .282 team attack percentage overall during that time.
 
"We're still working our way back to the lineup we had earlier in the season that we felt really good about," Kiracofe said. "But we're clicking really well right now in pretty much all areas and we still have more options to be able to make everything a little bit better. Certainly, looking forward to put that into use."
 
A big part of the uptick in overall production has been the performance of outside hitter Breanna Burrell. She is averaging 3.28 kills per set over the past four matches with a .354 hitting percentage. She had 12 kills on 24 error-free swings in the sweep of Lamar a week ago.
 
"The production level she's on right now is not something that's foreign to her, it's just a matter of her knowing we need it and her going out and doing it," Kiracofe said. "There hasn't necessarily been a change with her, she's been good since she's been here about being smart with her shots. I keep preaching to her to be aggressive when you can be and smart when you have to be. She's been able to do a good job of that in the last few matches."