NATCHITOCHES – The Northwestern State baseball team had its chances early to jump on longtime rival Louisiana Tech early Tuesday night.
 
While the Demons could not capitalize on their opportunities, the Bulldogs made the most of theirs in the middle of the game en route to a 7-0 victory at Brown-Stroud Field.
 
"It's hard to really do much of anything competitively if you don't put any runs on the board, because you can't really move around," third-year head coach Chris Bertrand said. "We had opportunities to score some runs early, and it didn't really work out. Then we allowed a little bit of things not going our way to spill into the competitiveness of our at-bats in the middle of the game."
 
Making his first start since May 17, 2024, graduate right-hander Chase Prestwich (1-1) was sharp early, facing the minimum through three innings.
 
A first-inning double play erased the lone base runner Prestwich allowed in that time as he kept the Demons (21-11) locked in a scoreless game.
 
The Bulldogs (18-16) found their stride in the fourth inning, stringing together five straight hits off Prestwich and Logan Trotter to start a four-run inning.
 
"Chase was great for three innings," Bertrand said. "That was really, really good. When you look at their crooked number, I think it started as a little bit of an outlier inning. It was five consecutive base hits, which is rare, but we've got to find a way to, at some point, shut it down and make it to where it's still within striking distance. And then when we come out of the bullpen, we've got to do a little bit of a better job to not allow them to extend that lead right there."
 
While the Louisiana Tech offense awakened in the middle innings, the Bulldogs' pitching kept the Northwestern order off balance.
 
After surrendering four hits in the first three innings, Louisiana Tech limited the Demons to one hit – Noah McNeil's seventh-inning single – in the final six innings.
 
Connor Nation (1-1) started the run with two shutout innings of relief before Landon Fontenot, Nate Crider and Riley Fisher closed it out, handing the Demons their second shutout loss of the year.
 
Thomas Marsala III had the lone multi-hit game for Northwestern, going 2-for-4 with singles in the first and third innings. His one-out single in the third gave the Demons their best threat early, putting runners on first and second with one out.
 
However, Nation recorded a popout and a strikeout to escape the jam.
 
"I thought the guys competed," Bertrand said. "The guys fought. I just didn't think we were very good on offense tonight. That's kind of the story of the game. We played really good defense. I thought Zach White had a good day with the glove. I thought Brooks Leonard had a good day in the outfield with the way he covered some ground on some difficult plays in right field. So we did some really good things, but we also did some poor competitive things. I'm very confident we're going to bounce back (Wednesday) and clean them up and get back to playing the Demon brand of baseball that has shown to be successful in the past couple of weeks."
 
The Demons return to action Wednesday night when they host Southern. First pitch is set for 6 p.m.
 
Louisiana Tech 7, Northwestern State 0
LT           000 401 020 – 7 10 1
NSU     000 000 000 – 0 5 0
W – Connor Nation (1-1). L – Chase Prestwich (1-1). 2B – LT, Trey Hawsey. Highlights: LT, Colby Lunsford 3-5, RBI; Hawsey 2-4, 2B, RBI; Colton Coates 2-4. NSU, Thomas Marsala III 2-4.
Records: Louisiana Tech 18-16; Northwestern State 21-11.