The Northwestern State Demons’ volleyball team can clinch a Southland Conference Tournament spot when they host the East Texas A&M Lions tonight at 6:30 p.m. in Prather Coliseum.
With a win, NSU will secure least the eighth seed in the eight-team conference tournament which begins next Friday, Nov. 20 in Corpus Christi, Texas. Northwestern hasn’t qualified for the conference tournament since 2023.
The Demons (14-15, 6-8 SLC) enter their homecourt finale tied for seventh in the SLC standings with Lamar (9-18, 6-8) and both have a one-match lead over the Lions (11-16, 5-9). The teams stage a rematch in the season finale Saturday afternoon in Commerce, which shapes up as a winner-take-all contest if Northwestern fails to clinch tonight.
“The key for us is not to change our approach,” said Demon head coach Ben Kaszeta. “Our goal from day one is to get one percent better every day. We have a great opponent and a very good team. They are the biggest size-wise team we have seen all year. They have three or four kids that are very good volleyball players and are going to be a very big block as well. They present a couple of different challenges for us so it will be fun. Anything after Thursday is irrelevant to us right now. Take care of business Thursday and then we will look and see.”
The Demons defeated one of the SLC’s best, UT-Rio Grande Valley (14-11, 10-4), last Saturday 3-1 led by 54 assists from Jade Longlad and Olivia Nzioki’s 18 kills snapping a six-game losing streak to the Vaqueros. NSU was able to pick up the win despite a season-high 34 attack errors.
The Lions are coming off back-to-back road wins over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (9-16, 5-9 SLC) on Saturday 3-1 and a five-set thriller over UTRGV on Thursday.
“We know that this is a different and difficult task,” said Kaszeta. “Yeah, everyone knows what’s at stake this week. But we are focused solely on what East Texas A&M does and what we need to do to slow them down and that will be enough to make sure nobody thinks about anything else other than winning this match.”
Fans can watch on ESPN+ as Patrick Netherton and Caley Carter will have the call. Live stats will be available at NSUDemons.com while live updates can be found on twitter/X on the NSU volleyball page @NSUDemonsVB.