HAMMOND – Getting a little rest and taking a breather is never a bad thing.
 
Following a bye week in conference play, Northwestern State returns to action this weekend looking to turn its break into a renewed and refreshed mindset for the final four weeks of the regular season.
 
 The Demons (14-23, 2-10) face, by many accounts, the best team in the Southland in Southeastern (33-8, 10-2) in a three-game series beginning with Friday's 4 p.m. doubleheader. Saturday's series finale is set for a 12 p.m. start. All games will air on ESPN+.
 
The week off came at a good time for NSU after a handful of injuries forced some shuffling of the lineup over the past few weeks and allowed for a respite from the standard wear-and-tear of a season.
 
"It's an opportunity to refocus mentally and to take care of your body and get it right for the final stretch here," head coach Lacy Prejean said about the time off. "We want to be at our best as we play these final four series heading into the tournament."
 
The Demons were swept by defending tournament champion McNeese two weeks ago with the primary downfall coming in a handful of big innings by the Cowgirl offense. In the third inning of all three games, McNeese scored at least four runs to take or extend leads. NSU evened the score following a 4-run third in the opener on a Tristin Court 2-run home run, but another big inning by the Cowgirls in the fifth helped them come away with a 10-8 win, despite being out hit in the game by NSU.
 
The 12 hits in the game for NSU, seven of them going for extra bases, are the most surrendered by McNeese this season in a conference game, and the second most by any team all year against the Cowgirls. 
 
"They got a couple of days off after that series and for Easter and got to spend some time with their families and we got back to work middle of last week," Prejean said. "We've had some great practices and had the chance to let those aches and pains of the season heal up a little bit. We worked on some fundamental stuff, some things defensively and at the plate and just had some good productive practices leading up to this weekend."
 
They will face a Southeastern team that had a 10-game winning streak snapped in dramatic fashion on Wednesday at No. 7 LSU. The Tigers rallied for two runs in the bottom of the seventh to tie the game, eventually winning on a walk-off 3-run home run in the eighth. The Lions have won 13 straight conference series dating back to last season, including a sweep of the Demons last year in Natchitoches.
 
The Lions rank in the top 10 in the country in hitting with a .345 team batting average and pitching with a 1.73 team ERA. They lead the country in stolen bases with 118 on the season with five players ranked in the top 10 in the conference in steals.
 
"You defend that by scoring runs," Prejean said. "When you do that, it slows down the opposing team's running game. They can't take that many risks on the base paths."
 
Eight of the nine players in the SLU lineup are hitting better than .300 on the season and all nine of them have an OPS over .780. 
 
Outfielder Audrey Greely was named conference hitter of the week this past week after hitting .571 at the plate in five games, including a three-game sweep of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. She was the fourth different Lion to win the weekly honor this season.
 
"We're going to have to play great defense and have timely hitting," Prejean said. "And then make some good pitches in situations where we need a strikeout or a fly ball out. Coach (Rick) Fremin is a very good coach that plays fundamental softball and a little old school in the sense that he plays execution and moving runners over no matter where they are in the lineup. It's going to be a good challenge, one that we can overcome, but we have to play solid defense and get those timely hits."