GRAMBLING – Twenty games into the 2025 season, the Northwestern State baseball team will experience a first as a group.
After playing its first four midweek games at home, the Demons finally hit the road for a weekday game, traveling to state rival Grambling for a 6 p.m. matchup today at Wilbert Ellis Field at R.W.E. Jones Stadium.
Streaming audio of the game can be heard on http://www.NSUDemons.com and through the Northwestern State Athletics mobile app, which can be downloaded free for Apple and Android devices.
Northwestern (11-8) picked up an 11-1 win against the Tigers (7-11) a week ago in Natchitoches in the first meeting between the teams.
This time, the Demons return the trip to Lincoln Parish and will hit the middle game of a seven-game road trip. After playing their first 16 games of the year on turf infields, all seven games of the road trip take place at stadiums that are natural surfaces.
The Demons have won six of the past seven games, including a perfect 5-0 homestand that concluded with the win against Grambling.
Similarly, the Tigers are coming in hot, having swept Alabama A&M in a three-game series to open Southwestern Athletic Conference play.
Northwestern will send sophomore right-hander Kevin Robinson (3-0, 4.91) to the mound for his second start against the Tigers in a week. The Tigers will counter with either Nick Robinson (0-2, 18.47) or Taylor Dooley (0-0, 17.47).
A Shreveport-Byrd High product, NSU’s Robinson has won all three of his starts this season.
He carries an eight-inning scoreless streak into today’s matchup at the spot where he earned his first career win April 2, 2024.
HILLEN WINS SLC HONOR: Trent Hillen’s first complete-game shutout of his career led to another first for Northwestern’s junior right-handed pitcher.
Hillen tossed a four-hit shutout Sunday at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi to help the Demons clinch the series. That performance landed Hillen his first career Southland Conference Pitcher of the Week award as announced by the conference office Monday afternoon.
A Morgan City native, Hillen tossed the first complete-game shutout by a Demon pitcher in more than two years and the first in Southland Conference play for a Demon in nearly six years.
Hillen threw 70 strikes in his 100 pitches and allowed only two Islanders to reach scoring position. One of those came in the first at-bat of the day on a bad-hop double. Following that, Hillen did not permit another runner to reach scoring position until there were two outs in the seventh inning.
He becomes the first Demon pitcher to earn the league’s weekly honor since Chase Prestwich did so on April 3, 2023.
