SAN ANTONIO, Texas – Playing at less than full strength due to varying levels of illness throughout the team, Northwestern State's ruffled performance was taken full advantage of by UIW in a 3-0 (25-13, 25-20, 25-16) sweep.
 
Coming off a reverse sweep on Thursday night, UIW (15-15, 7-11) came out firing on all cylinders from the opening serve. The Cardinals committed just seven unforced errors, including two sets with just two unforced errors, and their second-best hitting percentage in conference play of the season at .318 thanks to aggressive serves that kept the Demons from finding an offensive rhythm.
 
"It wasn't a good day today," head coach Sean Kiracofe said. "Our ball control in serve receive didn't allow us to get any consistent offensive pressure on UIW which made it hard to defend their transition offense. Unlike when we played them the first time, we didn't take advantage of their ball control weaknesses or put them in positions to make errors."
 
The Cardinals scored the first seven points of the first set with a pair of aces and five kills to set the tone for the rest of the day. They went on to tally 19 kills in the set and earned 22 of the needed 25 points in the set without the benefit of a Demon error.  
 
NSU's best stretch of play came late in the second set and nearly resulted in the Demons evening the match at a set a piece. 
 
Down 19-12 after another quick 3-0 UIW scoring burst, the Demons began chipping away at the lead thanks to a couple of rare-for-the-day Cardinal errors. A service and attack error provided the first two points before a block from Symone Wesley and La'Treva Kennedy, followed immediately by and ace from Wesley and another UIW error, made it a 5-1 NSU run and a three-point set.
 
Unfortunately, the Demons got into a side out game the rest of the way, trading points and kills over the next four serves and ran out of time to complete the comeback, falling 25-20 in the frame.
 
NSU's struggles to cleanly control Cardinal serves and attacks helped snap the Cardinals back into an offensive flow in the third, that only slightly dipped through the second set.
 
A 6-0 Cardinal run gave them a commanding lead late in the set, but the Demons fought to the end with a late 7-2 run on a pair of kills from Madisynne McQueen and Tessa Gerwig during the stretch.
 
The Demons finish the regular season with a 13-16 record overall and 9-9 mark in conference play. They enter the conference tournament as the No. 5 seed and will take on Texas A&M-Commerce in the first match of the weekend at 3 p.m. from the Dugan Wellness Center on the campus of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.