After each team strung together a string of Southland Conference success to move up the standings, this past weekend on the road along the Texas gulf coast was quite the opposite for the Northwestern State baseball and softball teams.
Both were swept in three-game SLC series on the road.
At Lamar, the Northwestern baseball team dropped a Friday night 5-0 decision, and after a rainout Saturday, suffered a 15-inning 4-3 loss in the first game of a Sunday doubleheader and fell 3-1 in the series’ final game.
In softball, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi won a 10-inning pitcher’s duel Friday 2-1, then outslugged visiting Northwestern 7-5 in the nightcap and posted a 7-2 victory in the getaway game Saturday.
BASEBALL: In Beaumont, the Demons fell out of the SLC lead after NSU (23-17, 14-10) suffered its first conference sweep since Week 1 of the 2025 Southland season at Southeastern Louisiana.
The Northwestern offense scored four runs in the sweep, scoring in two of the 33 innings where the Demons had an at-bat at Vincent-Beck Stadium.
“I wish I had some magical answer as to where all of these offensive woes are coming from, but the reality is that I’m really just not sure,” third-year head coach Chris Bertrand said. “We’ve go to take a little bit more pride in our way of thinking through the at-bats, and we’ve got to take a little bit more pride with two strikes. The only way we really know how to try to fix it is just to get back to work.”
Their lone crooked number of the weekend came on one swing when Joe Siervo erased a 1-0 deficit with a three-run home run in the sixth inning of Sunday’s first game – a contest that eventually went 15 innings.
Siervo’s fourth home run of the season put the Demons up 3-1 before Lamar (22-18, 14-7) answered with a Lane Sparks solo home run in the sixth and Kevin Duran’s second run-scoring fielder’s choice of the game in the eighth.
Northwestern had its best extra-inning shot in the 15th inning when JT Simonelli doubled to start the frame but was stranded at third base.
Lamar’s Tab Tracy worked a leadoff walk to start the 15th before eventually scoring on a wild pitch.
In the nightcap, Trent Hillen gave the Demons a quality start, allowing three earned runs in 6 1-3 innings.
Trailing 3-0, the Demons rallied in the eighth with their best threat the finale as Mason Wray led off with an opposite-field single and came around to score on Brooks Leonard’s one-out RBI single.
Northwestern loaded the bases with two outs but could not convert.
“It’s not good baseball execution at the moment,” Bertrand said. “It’s definitely not complementary in the way we try to be. On Friday night, we got the pitching we needed, and we lacked the offense and defense. Today, I thought we had the pitching and the defense, and we really lacked the offensive part of it. We played 33 innings this weekend, and we scored in two of them. We allowed our opponent to post 31 zeroes on the weekend. It’s got to be a little bit better than that if we’re expecting different results.”
The Demons return to action Tuesday when they host ULM. First pitch is set for 6 p.m. at Brown-Stroud Field. They go to Southern Wednesday then are home next weekend against Stephen F. Austin.
SOFTBALL: The Lady Demons (23-25, 12-12) saw a four-run lead disappear in a six-run Islander (14-34, 8-16) fourth-inning explosion in the second game on Friday evening. A&M-CC followed that with another decisive fourth inning on Saturday, as the Islanders scored seven runs in the frame to secure a 7-2 win.
“It really came down to one inning again,” head coach Jenny Fuller said. “We did a lot of good things on both sides and had some things not go our way but you can’t give teams extra chances and expect to come out on top. We’ve got to find a way to stop the momentum in those innings.”
The offensive outburst from the Islanders came after starting pitcher Brooklynn Stohler limited them to just one hit and two baserunners through the first three innings and one trip through the order. In Friday’s series opener, Northwestern ace Mattison Buster went all 10 innings but the Demons could not must enough runs to earn the win.
NSU will close the regular season at home next weekend against Nicholls.
