BOISE, Idaho – Fittingly, the Northwestern State men's basketball team will finish its longest stretch of time away from home this season by traveling the farthest away from campus it will during the 2023-24 season.
 
The Demons (1-8) cap a seven-game stretch away from Prather Coliseum on Tuesday night when they face Mountain West foe Boise State at 8 p.m. inside ExtraMile Arena. There will be no television coverage of the game.
 
Northwestern State enters Tuesday's game searching for its first win since the Nov. 6 season-opening win against Dallas Christian. NSU dropped an 83-74 decision at Southern Miss this past Saturday in a game that saw the Demons erase a 13-point deficit to take a second-half lead before falling to the Golden Eagles.
 
"If our record was judged by halves, we would have a lot of wins," first-year head coach Rick Cabrera said. "Unfortunately, it's not how the game works. When you have new guys and also a lot of guys out – I don't like to make excuses, but it's what we're dealing with – we've got to grow in this situation. If you don't fail, you'll never be able to have success. At this moment, we're failing record-wise, but we're growing and getting better together."
 
Tuesday's matchup between the Demons and Broncos (6-3) will be the first in program history and will mark the fourth time this season Northwestern State will face a first-time opponent. The other three times came at the beginning of the Demons' nearly monthlong odyssey that will see NSU play in five different states and three different time zones before returning home this Saturday to face Rice.
 
It also marks the farthest west the Demons have traveled for a game since playing then-No. 1 Gonzaga twice and Washington State once in a three-day span from Dec. 21-23, 2020.
 
"Part of scheduling this game is for our guys to get an opportunity to see another part of the country they probably wouldn't see otherwise," Cabrera said. ''Idaho is beautiful country. Boise is a beautiful city. Coach (Leon) Rice has done a phenomenal job there, but we are going up there to win the game, and I think we can."
 
Not only will the Demons face the challenge of playing a Mountain West opponent for the first time since 2017, they will do so in an arena where Boise State is 18-1 dating to the start of the 2022-23 season.
 
Factoring into that success at home is the Broncos' talent level as well as something not many of the Demons have faced in their careers – playing at a high altitude, 2,700 feet to be exact.
 
While most of the Demons are from areas that are at or near sea level, junior guard Jamison Epps is more than familiar with high-altitude venues after playing the 2022-23 season at Casper College in Casper, Wyoming, elevation 5,118 feet.
 
"It was one of the hardest breathing adjustments I had to do," said Epps, whose hometown of Lebanon, Kentucky, is roughly 700 feet above sea level. "Once we got used to it, it was easy. You've got to be able to control your breathing. If you're not used to doing it daily, it's tough."
 
Cabrera said his team will be ready for the twin challenges the final game of their long and winding road journey brings.
 
"Maybe a lot of (the altitude) is psychological," he said. "It's almost like once you say it to someone, they start to think about it and look at it as a negative. We'll see. We have some mentally tough guys who can get over it and focus on the task at hand, which is beating Boise and, most importantly, getting better as a team."