NATCHITOHES – Behind one of the best all-around performances of the season, Northwestern State tossed aside any thoughts of a potential winner's hangover with a 3-0 (25-20, 25-23, 25-16) sweep of rival Louisiana Tech on Friday night.
 
After going five-set in the Southland Conference opening win against Southeastern 24 hours earlier, the Demons (4-7, 1-0) mixed their offensive diversity and clinical defense with a little motivation for the home faithful to win their fourth match in a row on the season and the seventh in the last eight against the Bulldogs.
 
"We talked about how much a win against Louisiana Tech would mean to people here and not to go out thinking it was just another match but that there was a little more on the line," head coach Sean Kiracofe said. "I think they responded well to that and proved that they could have a great match the night before and follow it up and play well again."
 
The NSU attackers used every trick in the book throughout the night to mix up their shots, find the open floor and keep the Bulldog defense at the net on their heels and guessing. Led by Breanna Burrell and Tessa Gerwig's 13 kills each, the Demons hit .224 as a team, their third highest mark of the season.
 
We've known since the spring that we were going to have options offensively," Kiracofe said. "We haven't really had it present itself until this point but we have a bunch of different weapons that we can use to exploit other team's weaknesses at the net if they have them."
 
Both Burrell and Gerwig hit better than .300 on the night while four other players had at least four kills as NSU averaged 16.0 kills per set their best match average on the season.
 
"I really had the mindset to go out there and swing hard," Burrell said, who had five kills and no errors on nine swing in both the first and third sets. "That's really what I think about most of the time when I play. My setters put me in position to swing hard so there were times I went with the tips because they worked in practice. That's really how I was gauging my shots throughout the night."
 
It was a diving dig off a block attempt from Burrell that kept a rally for an eventual power shot kill, also from Burrell, on the fourth NSU point of the match that epitomized how much the Demons wanted the match.
 
Rally after rally extended by the NSU back row, led to lines, crosses and tips that found their way home for the six highly effective offense options on the night. Five different players finished the evening with 10 or more digs with both setters, Piper Boydstun and Amina Attra collecting assist-dig double-doubles, and Attra leading NSU with 14 digs.
 
"The win against Southeastern was huge, but tonight was the best we've played in terms of communication, our discipline on being where we needed to be, talking throughout plays and having layers defensively, someone making a great play and then being out of position on the next ball and someone else covering," Kiracofe said. "You go down the list and they were playing really well as a team."