BEAUMONT, Texas – The slate is clean for the Northwestern State baseball team, but one thing remains constant for the Demons as they enter the Southland Conference Tournament.
 
Sixth-seeded Northwestern begins postseason play at 1 p.m. Thursday when it faces No. 3 seed UTRGV at Lamar's Vincent-Beck Stadium in the opening game of the Beaumont Bracket of the league tournament. The game will air on ESPN+ with radio coverage on 100.7 FM KZBL in Natchitoches and through the Northwestern State Athletics mobile app, which can be downloaded free for Apple and Android devices.
 
"This is the time of the year where we try to take everything we've learned and put it to use at the most critical time," third-year head coach Chris Bertrand said. "This is a win-or-go-home type of situation. We want to be at our best. Sometimes that's physically and playing at your best. Sometimes it's mentally, wiping the slate clean – everybody's 0-0 and now – and it can be who can go out and execute clean baseball and be ready for the mental grind of postseason baseball where the margin of error is really, really slim.
 
"I feel like our team is in a position to do that, and I'm confident in their ability to take all of that and put it to use."
 
For Northwestern (25-24), facing the Vaqueros (26-27) is part of a culmination of a season that has challenged the Demons in numerous ways.
 
The Demons lost three infielders to season-ending injuries in the first month of the season while also losing four pitchers to injury – two of whom did not throw a pitch this season.
 
"When you have that type of adversity, we talk about learning and having a response," Bertrand said. "We learn from every moment when we talk about being gritty or having the next-man-up type of attitude. It's worth pointing that out because I'm proud of the way our team navigated itself throughout the season. By no means is it an excuse. For us, they're learning opportunities. I feel confident they will take all of that learning and be able to put it to good use."
 
The nine games Northwestern played against the three teams joining the Demons in Beaumont – No. 2 seed Lamar, No. 3 UTRGV and No. 7 Stephen F. Austin – offered plenty of learning for them on both ends of the success spectrum.
 
Northwestern went 5-4 in those games, sweeping UTRGV in Edinburg, Texas, from April 2-4 before being swept at Lamar from April 17-19. The Demons took two of three games from SFA in Natchitoches in their final home series of the year April 24-26.
 
"Our team was at a very different point," Bertrand said of sweeping UTRGV. "There's the ability to say, when we were down there, we caught some breaks. We played unbelievable baseball. How can we learn and replicate it and learn from where they were in a very different position and how they have been over the past five weeks? They were a totally different team as well. How can we learn from the good and the bad and not only learn from ourselves but also learn from our opponent in order to be well-prepared and well-equipped for this battle."
 
Thursday's matchup features a Demon pitching staff that led the league and ranks 24^th nationally in ERA (4.28) against a UTRGV offense that scored the second-most runs (346) in the Southland this season.
 
Northwestern will send junior right-handed pitcher Dylan Marionneaux (4-2, 3.13), a first-team all-conference selection, to the mound. Since allowing four runs in the first inning of his April 3 start at UTRGV, Marionneaux has surrendered just two earned runs in his past 38 2-3 innings, which included six innings of one-hit ball to close out his seven-inning stint against the Vaqueros.
 
Included in that stretch were a combined 17 1-3 innings of one-run ball against Stephen F. Austin on April 25 and at McNeese on May 7. Despite Marionneaux's efforts, the Demons split those games – two of the 16 one-run contests the Demons have played this season.
 
"Every time Slim goes out there, you know what you're going to get," Bertrand said. "Kevin (Robinson) is in a very similar situation. We're confident we know what we're going to get out of our starting pitching. We celebrate and are proud of what Slim has accomplished and know he has earned that confidence. How can we complement him better than what was going on at the tail end of the season? That's that learning. We feel confident in another quality start against an amazing opponent.
 
"How can we offensively and defensively, as a team, complement what we feel confident is going to be a great start for him? I'm proud of what our guys have done, but how can we learn how to complement if we want a better result?"