NATCHITOCHES – It will be best against best when Northwestern State takes on Tarleton State on Wednesday night at Prather Coliseum.
 
The Demons (3-4), playing some stingy, light's out defense over the past couple of weeks take on the best shooting team in the WAC in the Texans (2-4, 1-1) in the final non-conference home game of the season.
 
Tip-off is set for 5 p.m. with the game airing live on ESPN+.
 
Prior to the game three Demon basketball players, who will be graduating next week, will receive their ceremonial graduation stoles in a pregame ceremony. Kaemelah Dean, Jordan Todd and Jiselle Woodson all earned their bachelor's degrees in psychology and will continue taking classes in the spring towards secondary degrees.
 
NSU has won three straight games entering Wednesday's contest, doing so in some quite different fashions offensively, but with one common defensive thread.
 
After putting up nearly 200 points in two games at home a week ago, NSU needed just 46 to secure a comfortable double-digit win on the road at defending SWAC champion Southern on Sunday afternoon. Each of the three wins adding another scoop of confidence to a team that, according to head coach Anna Nimz, is beginning to put it all together.
 
"The biggest thing is it's building confidence," Nimz said. "It's showing them that they are capable of playing with champions. Last week showed that they can score an abundance of points. When we can really start pushing that together they have the opportunity to be a very special team. We were able to get one on the road in a tough gym and go home with some added confidence sending us into Wednesday's game."
 
The confidence built on the defensive end has been building and thriving over the past five games. Going back to the Tulsa game just under a month ago, the NSU defense is allowing just 48.6 points per game to their opponents. 
 
NSU had held each of their past two opponents to fewer than 40 points, the first time that has happened in program history, and their past three opponents in a row to fewer than 45 points, also a program first. During the past two games NSU have allowed 10 or fewer points in a quarter five times.
 
"The overall communication and ability to lock in and focus in on that scout defense has gotten a lot better," Nimz said. "It's sort of turning into a 'next level' defense where we can be a little more creative on the coaching end and they are locked into doing what they're supposed to be doing. We have some mishaps but we're holding very good teams to very low scores. It's exciting to see and they are really getting excited about it."
 
The Demon defense will be tested by the best shooting team in the WAC in Tarleton who come in with a team field goal percentage of .460 for the season.
 
Tarleton has seven players that have taken 25 or more shots this season shooting better than 35 percent from the field. Of those three have more than 30 shot attempts with better than .400 shooting percentages.
 
"We're going to have to do our job on the perimeter with our ball pressure and try and work to make them uncomfortable," Nimz said. "Our bigs are going to have their hands full with their inside presence. And they have some real strong forwards that play really well off one another. They have several high percentage shooters that will be a challenge to guard but I think we're ready for that opportunity."
 
Leading scorer Teresa Da Silva is putting in 11.8 points per game, surprisingly the only player on the Texans scoring in double digits that has played more than two games this year. She has scored 11 or more points in four of her five appearances this season and led all scorers with 17 in the game a year ago against the Demons.
 
The injection of 6-foot-2 freshman Faith Acker in the past two games has given Tarleton a different look around the basket as Acker has scored 16 and 20 points on 60 percent shooting at the rim against Stephen F. Austin and UTRGV. She is also averaging 7.5 rebounds per game.