BATON ROUGE – As the Northwestern State men's basketball team opens its longest road trip of the season in terms of games and distance, it does so with a renewed sense of confidence.
 
The Demons enter Friday's 7 p.m. tip at LSU coming off their first Division I victory of the season, a 13-point win against North Alabama this past Sunday that followed consecutive two-point defeats. Friday's game will stream live on SEC Network Plus.
 
"It let us feel like we figured some things out," junior forward Willie Williams said. "We were going into games saying, 'Oh, we could have won that one. We almost had that one.' We finally got one and figured it out."
 
Some teams go into these games thinking they can't win," junior forward Willie Williams said. "We don't think that. We really believe we can win these games."
 
The Tigers (5-1) stand as the third power-conference opponent for Northwestern (2-4) this season.
 
The Demons have acquitted themselves well in their two previous games against such opposition this season. Against Texas Tech on Nov. 8, the Demons were within 11 points before going cold offensively down the stretch.
 
Three days later at Oklahoma, Northwestern led the Sooners until the 13-minute mark in the game.
 
"Anybody can play with anybody if you really believe you can," junior forward Jerald Colonel said. "Everybody's confidence has to be there."
 
Colonel and Williams, two-thirds of the Demons' starting frontcourt, are both junior-college transfers who have made their marks on the Demons in the early part of their first Division I seasons.
 
Williams recorded an 11-point, 11-rebound double-double at Oklahoma in the same game where Colonel blocked four shots. Colonel enters Friday's game on a run of six straight games with multiple blocked shots, the longest for a Demon since the 2018-19 season when Ishmael Lane had a streak of 10 straight games with multiple rejections.
 
Williams (6.0 per game) and Colonel (5.7) also are the Nos. 1 and 2 rebounders for a Demon team that held its own on the boards against Texas Tech and Oklahoma on the boards. The pair will be asked again to lead the way against an LSU team that is outrebounding opponents by 5.2 rebounds per game this season.
 
"If you box out, it doesn't matter the size," second-year head coach Rick Cabrera said. "That's something we practice every day, some form of boxing out. If you don't box out, that's when length and size kick in. Those guys have done a phenomenal job of doing their job, getting inside position, securing rebounds and getting extra rebounds on the offensive end. If we continue to do that, we'll win a lot of ball games."
 
The Demons and Tigers are meeting for the second straight season, the first set of back-to-back games between the programs since the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons.
 
Just as his charges have become familiar with playing power-conference foes, Cabrera is becoming more and more in tune with the place where he spent time as a high school player, attending Dale Brown basketball camps.
 
"Last year was special because of my childhood memories," he said. "Obviously, I didn't like the outcome (a 96-55 LSU win). I feel a lot better going into my second year. We'll be facing a really good team, but I like our chances because I like our team as well.
 
"There's something about this team. Obviously, you can't predict how games are going to go, but we have a swagger about us that we're going to compete. We're not going to back down from anybody regardless of conference. These dudes are everyday guys. They feel, going into games like this, they can win it. That's the attitude you want to have as players. As coaches, it makes you feel good to have guys who have that feeling."