After a costly loss at home Thursday night, the Northwestern State women’s basketball team joins the men’s squad in Prather Coliseum Saturday afternoon in the last homecourt doubleheader of this season.
Both teams are in next weekend’s Southland Conference Tournament and can enhance their seedings with Saturday wins over Houston Christian. Tip time is 1 p.m. for the women’s contest, 3:30 for the men, in the only home competition of the weekend for NSU teams.
Thursday night, the Northwestern women could not slow down UIW in a 71-64 loss at Prather Coliseum.
With the loss, the Demons (13-14, 10-8) fall behind UIW (16-12, 11-8) in the standings and the Cardinals earn the tiebreaker with the sweep after beating Northwestern on a buzzer beater in December in Beaumont.
UIW shot 50 percent in the rematch, connecting on at least 50 percent from the field in each of the first three quarters. The only team to shoot better than the Cardinals did against the Demons defense is No. 7 LSU, which shot 52.7 percent.
The only other team to make at least 40 percent of its shots against Northwestern in 2025 is league-leading Southeastern Louisiana.
“We’ve given up 70 points in back-to-back games, which is very uncharacteristic for our team,” head coach Anna Nimz said. “That is super disappointing, as was giving up 17 points off turnovers. We’ve gone the wrong direction the last two games, so we have to lock back in, come together and re-focus.”
The Demons sit in sixth place, a half-game behind both UIW and UTRGV with two games remaining.
After an even first quarter, UIW blitzed Northwestern in the second quarter, shooting 56.3 percent while holding the Demons to just 25 percent in the frame to outscore the home team 20-9 and open a 37-26 halftime lead.
Like it has all season, UIW received contributions from everybody, as four players reached double figures, but none more than 13. UIW’s bench was a force, scoring 35 of the team’s points.
In the second half, Northwestern State fought back, like it has all season, outscoring UIW 18-8 in the first seven minutes of the third quarter following a 3-pointer from Sharna Ayres, one of her four in the game, to cut it to 45-44.
“We got it within one,” Nimz said. “But we kept talking that we were trading buckets way too much. We were getting one or two stops, but we were never quite getting that kill, that third stop. They are a tremendous free throw shooting team and we gave them way too many opportunities at the charity stripe.”
UIW responded immediately, finishing the third frame on an 8-2 run to push the lead back to seven at 53-46 and it was never closer than six from there thanks to the visitors going on a 17-4 run dating back to the third quarter.
Mya Blake scored a game-high 18 points, pacing three Demons in double figures. She was joined by Shawna Ayres’ 12 and Vernell Atamah scored 10.