Power and patience equaled another double-figure scoring game at home for the Northwestern State baseball team Tuesday night.
The Demons took advantage of wildness from the Southern-New Orleans bullpen, capitalizing on double-figure walks and hit by pitches to deliver a 14-3, seven-inning victory at Brown-Stroud Field.
The Demons are back in action at home this evening against Alcorn. First pitch is set for 6 p.m.
“What I’m most proud of our team about is we have learned lessons from the first two weekends that we put into action,” said second-year head coach Chris Bertrand, whose team scored double-figure runs for the third straight home game. “What we learned from being successful against Central Arkansas we put to use tonight. What we learned from not being successful at Troy, we put to use tonight. I feel like our team played a very complementary brand of baseball, which we’ve been in search of, and I think they played a very complete ball game. In those seven innings, we did a lot of things well.”
Northwestern (3-4) used a balanced attack to bounce back from a three-game sweep last weekend at then-No. 24 Troy. The Trojans (7-1) stretched their win streak to four Tuesday night with a 6-5 victory at 15th-ranked Mississippi State.
Back at home Tuesday evening, the Demons drew 13 walks and two Samuel Stephenson hit by pitches and turned them into eight runs, helping stave off a game effort by the Knights, a second-year NAIA program playing the game as an exhibition.
After Rocco Gump’s first-inning triple scored Stephenson following his first hit by pitch, the Knights scratched out a pair of runs off Demon starter Kevin Robinson (1-0).
The visitors’ lead did not last long as Stephenson drilled a tie-breaking three-run home run to left field in the bottom half of the second.
It was one of two run-scoring hits for Stephenson, who added a two-run single in a four-run fifth inning to finish with a career-high five RBIs.
“I was generally just thinking get a good pitch and not be too early,” Stephenson said. “Just stay through it. If I pull off it, I roll over it, so I may as well stay through it and hit a bomb.”
Stephenson and Gump (2-for-4, 3 RBIs) finished with the only multi-hit games of the night for Northwestern, who saw Stephenson and leadoff hitter Reese Lipoma combine to score seven runs on a night where the Demons swiped seven bases.