CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas—Following another thrilling Southland Conference Tournament victory, Northwestern State has a quick turnaround as it battles Stephen F. Austin for the second time in three games.

Kickoff is at 4 p.m. on Thursday at the Dr. Jack Dugan Soccer and Track & Field Stadium.

The No. 4 Demons (11-7-2) are coming off another breathtaking tournament game, as Taylor Spitzer scored on a header in the second overtime to defeat No. 5 Southeastern Louisiana 2-1. It was their fourth consecutive overtime game in the conference tournament, dating back to 2022.

With the win, Northwestern State has made the semifinals in the SLC Tournament in five of the last six seasons, including the last four.

Their opponent is top-seeded Stephen F. Austin (12-3-2), who knocked off No. 8 UTRGV 3-1 in the first game of the tournament.

These two teams met Nov. 1 with the SLC Tournament on the line and SFA came up with a 5-0 victory in Nacogdoches and knocked the Demons to the No. 4 seed.

"I think there is a big part of the game we can take out of that loss," head coach Ian Brophy said. "For us, it is just about learning. In the first 35 minutes of that game, we could have done more to take advantage of our opportunities to take control of the game and get ourselves better footing competitively. I just felt like we didn't do that.

"We'll make slight adjustments on some things we want to fix, but part of it is that we just need to play better."

Despite being long-time rivals and being in the same conference the entire time outside of three years where the Lumberjacks called the WAC home, this is the first ever neutral site game between the two and only the second SLC Tournament meeting.

The only other one came in Nacogdoches in 1997, the 1-0 Demons victory en route to their first ever SLC Tournament championship.

In the quarterfinal victory Tuesday afternoon, Northwestern State called upon one of its stars to come through.

An All-SLC First Team selection, Spitzer showed why she earned it with the game winner following a corner kick from Alina Graf, her fourth assist of the season, becoming the fifth Demon to record at least four assists this season, joining Spitzer, Isabella Ruggiano, Caroline Hilliard and Emma Pethel.

Overall, the Demons have 36 assists as a team, the most helpers since dishing out 44 assists in 2005.

"A lot of what we ask our players to do is make the smart decision," Brophy said. "Soccer is all about decision making. We tell them all the time that if you can make good decisions, then the goals will come. When we try to force goals and take shots, like we tell our players if we fire it in on their goalkeeper from 40 and it was soft, you just gave the ball away.

"It is all about can we take advantage of our opportunities, which I think has led to the assists, just homing in on what is the right decision to make and a lot of times there is a teammate open who can crack one in for a goal."

The two-goal effort pushes the record to 10-0 this season when the Demons score multiple goals in a game.

To come to that point, the Demons needed a clutch goal from Dawson Marrs to tie the score late, her second of the season, the eighth Northwestern State player to score multiple goals this season, the most since 2019.

The Lumberjacks come in with a tremendous deal of confidence after winning the regular season title and triumphing over UTRGV in the opener.

SFA collected most of the awards, including SLC Coach of the Year (Ben Williams), SLC Freshman of the Year (Alex Bayouth), SLC Midfielder of the Year (Ava Shannon) and SLC Defender of the Year (Ella Morgan), not to mention a whopping eight on the all-conference teams.

"They are athletic and they work hard," Brophy said. "I think the thing for us is trying to have them a bit further back. From our standpoint in the game, we kind of invited their athleticism onto us and did some things that I would like to do differently. It will take a team effort."

Libe Banuelos, Northwestern State's senior goalkeeper, needs to have a terrific performance against an SFA offense that has scored 57 goals and records better than 20 shot attempts per game.

Despite only playing two seasons in Natchitoches, Banuelos currently ranks eighth in program history with 178 career saves.

The winner of this match heads to the tournament title game against the winner of the other semifinal, which is No. 3 Texas A&M-Commerce against homestanding No. 2 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.