CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – Standing in the way of the Northwestern State men's basketball team's second three-game win streak in Southland Conference play is a formidable foe – Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
 
Unlike the first meeting between the teams on Jan. 27 in Natchitoches, the Demons will be at fuller strength than they were the first time around. Sophomore forward Jimel Lane missed the Islanders' 79-68 victory, which left the already short-handed Demons without another scholarship player.
 
Entering Monday's 7 p.m. Southland Conference matchup with Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on ESPN+, Lane is back and playing as consistently as he has at any point in his first Division I season.
 
"We did miss Jimel in that game," first-year head coach Rick Cabrera said. "I told the staff after that. Not to say if he was here we would have won it, but when we made our run against Corpus and we cut it to six at some point, he would fit well in that run. He plays really hard. Against a team like Corpus that plays really hard, you have to have guys who play really hard to match that intensity. We missed that. We were already low on numbers. We definitely needed another body, especially one with athleticism and size."
 
At 6-foot-7, Lane is one of the taller members of the Demons (8-18, 6-7), who are looking to match their three-game Southland win streak from Jan. 13-20.
 
Having Lane back should help the Demons better deal with the Islanders (15-10, 8-4), who outrebounded Northwestern State by seven in the opening meeting and produced a 43-11 advantage in bench points.
 
In each of the Demons' past two home games, Lane has been awarded the "Toughness Timbz," Northwestern State's symbol of the player who has done the little things to help the Demons in victory or in defeat. He followed those performances up with a 14-point, five-rebound effort in Northwestern State's 81-61 win at UIW on Saturday.
 
In that three-game stretch, Lane is averaging five rebounds per game – 1.7 per game better than his season average.
 
"I don't want to say I'm not easy to play for, but I'm very demanding," Cabrera said. "Jimel is my kind of guy. He plays hard. He's coachable. He started games for us earlier in the season, but we needed him to rebound more, be tougher inside the paint.
 
"He's shown that grit and toughness. He does things that will never go on the stat sheet. He fits what we do. That's why he's having success."
 
Lane, in his first year playing for Cabrera after spending the 2022-23 season at Division II Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, did not mind the direct coaching he received.
 
"Being my size, I feel like I should be crashing the glass a lot," Lane said. "In non-conference, I wasn't doing so. In conference, that was a big thing to do for me and for the team. I accepted it. I felt, myself, I needed to do more. It added more fuel to the fire and helped me become the player I am now and the way I'm playing now."
 
That coaching has led to more confidence from Lane, who has tapped into an edge he always felt was within his game.
 
"I always played with a little bit of toughness," he said. "Coach Cabrera has helped me learn to play with toughness and more intelligence as well. I can assure you I wasn't playing like that at the beginning of the season. Toward the end, I feel like I'm fulfilling the role I'm supposed to."