NATCHITOCHES – The Northwestern State baseball team answered an in-house challenge with authority Saturday afternoon.
 
Third-year head coach Chris Bertrand implored his Demon lineup to produce in the second game of a Southland series against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi – and Northwestern did.
 
The Demons scored in six of its eight at-bats, continuously extending an early lead, and junior right-hander Dylan Marionneaux settled in to deliver 7 1-3 strong innings as Northwestern clinched a series win against the Islanders with a 10-4 victory at Brown-Stroud Field.
 
"I'm so proud of our team," Bertrand said. "Complementary baseball because of two things today – compete and respond. Our team competed in the right way all day long, and our spirit of competition was exactly where it needed to be. We were responders all day long. Slim (Marionneaux) got to that point because of the way he responded to what took place in the second inning. Our offense responded at every turn. Our defense responded at every turn.
 
"I really did challenge our hitters in our hitters' meeting this morning to do some of the things that brought us to this point today. I'm proud of the way they accepted the challenge and came out and executed a game plan."
 
Northwestern (12-7, 5-3) fell behind 1-0 for the second straight game as Jarrett Flaggert and Jackson Smith delivered consecutive two-out doubles in the first inning, but the Demons had a physical response in their half of the first.
 
The first three Demons – Brooks Leonard, JT Simonelli and Thomas Marsala – reached to load the bases against Islander starter Nathan Mueller before Joe Siervo lined an RBI single off Mueller's hip. Mueller tried to stay in the game and walked Ethan Menard to force in the go-ahead run.
 
Zach White's two-out, two-run single off reliever Matthew Molina (0-1) capped the four-run inning and started a banner day for the lower third of the Demon lineup.
 
White, who hit eighth, Mason Wray and Sam Ardoin combined to go 6-for-13 with four RBIs, extending the Demons' lineup.
 
"The challenge to our hitters was to stay in the strike zone and keep battling, don't give away at-bats," said Ardoin, who finished 2-for-5 with two RBIs. "A big focus of ours recently is to find a way on base and keep competing. Us guys at the bottom of the lineup did a good job of getting on base and competing our butts off."
 
The Islanders answered Northwestern's four-run first with a game-tying, three-run second inning against Marionneaux (1-2). Much like Friday night's game, however, the Islanders' offense went cold after the second inning.
 
Marionneaux, like Brody Trosclair in the series opener, tightened things up after allowing a two-out single to Max Towchik in the third. Towchik's single gave the Islanders their last base runner against Marionneaux until Flaggert's one-out single in the eighth inning.
 
In between, Marionneaux retired 14 straight and posted six of his career-high-tying nine strikeouts in that span.
 
During that time, the Demons added single runs in the third, fifth and sixth innings before Michael McAloose capped the scoring with his second home run of the year – a line-drive shot to left field leading off the eighth. With his home run, all nine Demon starters posted at least one hit as Northwestern banged out 13 hits and has recorded 24 hits in the first two games of the series.
 
"The biggest thing that changed was my intent with the execution of pitches," Marionneaux said. "I sat there and realized that executing pitches in the right counts is going to help our team. (Our defense) is awesome. They're always on their A-game. When you have a group that talented out there that's playing behind you, you get nothing but confidence from that."
 
The series concludes Sunday at 1 p.m. with a matchup of right-handers. Northwestern will send Trent Hillen (1-1, 5.95) to the mound against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi's Bryson Shea (1-2, 7.90).
 
Northwestern State 10, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 4
AMCC 130 000 000 – 4 8 1
NSU     421 011 01x – 10 13 2
W – Dylan Marionneaux (1-2). L – Matthew Molina (0-1). 2B – AMCC, Jarrett Flaggert, Jackson Smith, Isaiah Afework. NSU, JT Simonelli, Ethan Menard, Mason Wray, Zach White. HR – NSU, Michael McAloose (2). Highlights: AMCC, Flaggert 2-4, 2B; Smith 2-4, 2B, RBI. NSU, Brooks Leonard 2-4; White 3-4, 2B, 2 RBIs; Sam Ardoin 2-5, 2 RBIs.
Records: Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 10-9, 0-4; Northwestern State 12-7, 5-3.