Scoring a career high on your Senior Night is a wonderful way to finish.
Doing so in your hometown is even sweeter.
Natchitoches’ own Nia Hardison had a Demon dream-come-true performance, scoring a career-high 21 points lthat led Northwestern State to a dominant 76-56 victory over East Texas A&M Wednesday in Prather Coliseum on Senior Night and the regular-season finale for both teams.
“My heart is full,” head coach Anna Nimz said. “I am proud of the girls. I am thankful to these seniors. They have done something that Northwestern State women’s basketball hasn’t done in a really long time. I am proud they put in the work and finally reach some of the benefits.”
Hardison’s 21 came on 8-of-12 shooting, as Northwestern (15-14, 12-8) wrapped up its first overall winning record in the regular season in nearly a decade.
“It feels good to go out and score a career high tonight,” Hardison said. “But I didn’t go out with a mindset of going out there to score. I was just in the moment of playing the game. It just all came to me.”
The Demons overcame a slow start while the Lions (7-22, 4-16) shot 47 percent in the first quarter and took a 21-16 lead.
After going scoreless in the first quarter, senior Mya Blake came out firing in the second. Blake scored 10 of her 19 in the second quarter, as the Demons finished on a 17-6 run, turning a five-point deficit to a 37-31 lead at halftime.
The Demons held a prolific offense to just 10 points in the third quarter, outscoring the Lions 21-10 to take control.
“It always starts with defense,” Nimz said. “We’ve never been a team to blow it out of the water. It always needs to stay focused on our defense. We were very effective on our press and got our hands on a lot of things and were able to score a lot of quick points. That transitioned into better halfcourt defense — better pressure, better hands on ball.
“We held a very good scoring team to 10 points in the second quarter. We just have to figure out how to do that for four quarters without pressing.”
While Hardison had two early 3-pointers to start her day off strong, she took over in the third quarter, scoring nine of her 21 in the third quarter, helping the Demons blow open the game with a 17-1 spurt to push the lead to 22 points at 57-35.
During that run, Hardison and Mya Blake scored a combined 14 of the 17 points. The Demons had 22 points off turnovers in the middle two quarters, scoring 33 points.
In a final statement in the race for conference player of the year, Blake’s 19 points came with six rebounds, four assists and three steals.
She is just the third Northwestern women’s basketball player to reach 500 points in a season in the last 25 years and first since Beatrice Attura in 2016-17.
Quietly, Vernell Atamah posted her sixth double-double of the season, recording 16 rebounds and 10 rebounds, bolstering her candidacy for SLC freshman of the year honors. Of Atamah’s 10 boards, six of them came on the offensive glass.
The Demons are back in action at the Southland Conference Tournament as the No. 5 seed, playing No. 8 seed Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on Monday at 11 a.m. in Lake Charles.
“We’re ready for the conference tournament,” said Nimz. “In these last handful of moments, it’s taking all of our good moments and putting them together for 40 minutes and while I am happy after a 20-point win, I don’t think we have tickled how good we can actually be.”