NATCHITOCHES – Weather permitting, the Northwestern State baseball team starts its busiest week of the 2026 season thus far at home Tuesday night.
 
The Demons (9-7) have the first of three five-game weeks scheduled with Alcorn State visiting Brown-Stroud Field at 6 p.m. Tuesday before Northwestern heads to Grambling on Wednesday at 6 p.m. to cap a two-game, home-and-home season series with the Tigers.
 
Tuesday's game will air on ESPN+ while free streaming audio of Wednesday's game will be available on www.NSUDemons.com and through the Northwestern State athletics mobile app, which can be downloaded free for Apple or Android devices.
 
"The word balance is something we're going to continue to focus on," third-year head coach Chris Bertrand said. "We're going to have that first-time feeling, and we're going to have that first-time opportunity. We want to balance that with where we are in the season, and we want to balance that with what it is we're still discovering about our team. It's something we're definitely looking forward to, because we want to capitalize upon the momentum we've built. We want to extend a quality brand of baseball, and we want to have the opportunity to extend a winning streak."
 
Northwestern returns home to face an Alcorn State (2-13) team it is becoming more and more familiar with as it starts a two-game run against teams from the Southwestern Athletic Conference.
 
This marks the second straight season for the Braves to visit Natchitoches and the third time since 2022 when the teams met in a three-game series at Brown-Stroud Field.
 
The Braves enter the game with an offense that will challenge Northwestern's defense. Alcorn State has swiped 21 bases in 15 games, doing so at a 72.4 percent success rate.
 
"One of the things we like about the schedule and the way it lays out – in this case, particularly, the midweek schedule – is you play different types of teams, which forces you to play against different styles of baseball, and it challenges different parts of your game," Bertrand said. "We know the two teams we face this week are going to be very athletic teams. We know they have speed. We know they're going to play with great skill sets, so it challenges you to hold runners. It challenges you to defend the short game whenever that becomes a necessity. It challenges your infielders and outfielders on how they approach balls and then secure the baseball and efficiently get rid of it. You've got to be accurate with everything you do."
 
Northwestern took the final two games of its three-game series at UIW, giving the Demons their first series win at Sullivan Field presented by H-E-B since 2018.
 
Northwestern's offense came alive in the offense-friendly environment in San Antonio. The Demons hit .317 as a team and slugged eight home runs in the three-game series, continuing the momentum they built in a 13-1, seven-inning win against Grambling on March 3.
 
That result, however, holds no bearing on Wednesday's game in Bertrand's eyes.
 
In the three most recent two-game season series with Grambling (3-11), the Demons have won their home games by an average of seven runs per game. The margin of victory in Grambling, however, has been 3.7 runs per game.
 
"We talked throughout the weekend about how much a place like UIW and playing there challenges you," Bertrand said. "It's a different atmosphere. It's a different style that you go in and play. So what can we pull value from last week's game against Grambling, but also how can we call upon the experience of the three games we just played (at UIW) and be able to go into a very difficult place to play and how do we respond to that? What is our answer for that?
 
"You hope that you call upon everything we've been through, specifically those two things – the game against Grambling and the weekend series we just had. How do you call upon that and have a solution to things immediately? That's where experience and learning in the way we talk about it comes in."