GRAMBLING – Northwestern State continues its final multi-week road stretch on Tuesday afternoon when it visits Grambling in the final midweek game of the season.
With one month until the start of the Southland Conference Tournament, the Lady Demons (19-17, 6-6) are hopeful to at minimum match the progress they have made since the start of league play one month ago.
NSU was the first team this season to beat league-leader McNeese in a conference game, getting a come-from-behind 7-6 win in the first game of the series this past weekend. Although the Lady Demons suffered losses in the final two games of the weekend, a timely hit late in Saturday’s pitching duel could have very easily given them a signature series win.
The win and the opportunity for at least one more against the current best team in the conference are the latest signs of overall and individual growth NSU has shown since the beginning of conference play.
“I’m proud of the girls for the progress they’ve made in the past few weeks,” head coach Donald Pickett said. “We’re trying things and they’re working hard. We’re a lot better team than we were a month ago and we’ve just got to continue to go out and keep that work up like we have. If we can do that hopefully we’ll be an even better team a month from now.”
NSU travels to UIW this weekend to end its seven-game road swing but will first have to deal with a solid Grambling (23-12-1, 9-3) squad that it battled against for a 2-1 win in Natchitoches earlier this season.
First pitch for the final midweek of the season is set for 3 p.m. from the GSU Softball Complex. There will be no video feed available for the broadcast.
The Tigers rank first or second in the SWAC in 12 different statistical categories, the most notable being their stolen base total.
Grambling has swiped 145 bases on 157 attempts this year which leads the nation. Sophomore Kaytlyn Moore and senior India Wells both have more than 30 steals this season and are second and third in the country, behind Marshall’s Alex Coleman, for total steals this year with 36 and 33 respectively.
There have been just five games this season where Grambling was held without a stolen base, all losses for the Tigers. One of those five games was the meeting in Natchitoches where the Demons held Grambling without a steal attempt, one of just three times that has happened this year for GSU.
The NSU battery has done a good job controlling opponent’s running game with the fourth fewest steal attempts against it in the Southland at just 27 for the year.
