JOURNAL SPORTS
BATON ROUGE – Although the Southland Conference Tournament is dead ahead, the Northwestern State baseball team plays its highest-profile game tonight.
The Demons visit LSU in NSU’s final regular-season game at 6:30 p.m. at Alex Box Stadium, Skip Bertman Field. The contest will stream live on SEC Network Plus. Thursday, Northwestern opens the revamped Southland Conference Tournament in Lake Charles with a 1 p.m. matchup against Nicholls.
With Southland membership down to eight, the conference is conducting two four-team, double-elimination brackets this week at Lake Charles (regular-season champion McNeese hosting) and Hammond (home of second-place Southeastern Louisiana). The two surviving teams meet next weekend in a three-game series to determine the league’s NCAA Tournament representative.
Considering that high stakes competition less than 48 hours away from tonight’s first pitch, it’s virtually certain the Demons won’t use any of their top pitchers. They will hope to get the bats moving, and they definitely embrace the opportunity against LSU – a team that Northwestern has topped in the last two meetings.
“It’s always a good trip,” sixth-year Demons’ head coach Bobby Barbier said. “It’s a good trip to get better. It’s a good trip to play against a really good team. When you play those really good teams, the ball moves a little bit faster whether it’s on the ground or from the mound. It’s an opportunity to do that and, hopefully, get better going into the (conference) tournament.”
The Demons (25-26) have won their past two games against LSU (33-18) for the first time since taking two straight April 2-3, 1996.
In addition to facing a Power Five opponent for the first time since playing Nebraska on March 5, the game serves as a homecoming of sorts for several Demons, including senior center fielder Larson Fontenot and senior shortstop Cam Sibley.
Fontenot has been part of the back-to-back wins against the Tigers and was a member of the 2018 Demon team that was within two outs of eliminating the Tigers from the Corvallis Regional.
A season ago, Fontenot went 4-for-5 with a stolen base and an RBI as the Demons built a six-run lead in an eventual 7-3 win that came 28 miles from Fontenot’s hometown of St. Amant.
“It’s really nice going over there and playing at Alex Box, where you grew up watching them play,” Fontenot said. “It’s a good feeling to go play against them.”
Fontenot is not the only Demon from the Baton Rouge area who will play a short distance from home. Fellow senior shortstop Cam Sibley played his high school career at Dutchtown High School in suburban Geismar while outfielder Reese Lipoma is another St. Amant product. Pitcher Thomas Sotile (University High, Baton Rouge) and freshman infielder AJ Bailey (Zachary) also hail from greater Baton Rouge.
Sibley had to wait almost two years into his NSU career to face LSU after the Panola College transfer saw his first Demon season cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Demons’ 2020 date against LSU was set for April 28 before the pandemic shuttered the season 16 games into it.
“It’s fun to go down and play them,” said Sibley, one of eight seniors and nine Demons who will play their final regular-season game Tuesday. “They have such a great facility. The atmosphere is unmatched. It’s fun to go down there and show our skills against those guys. We just have to go down and play our game.”
Northwestern State will send right-hander Dawson Flowers (0-2, 4.88) to the mound while LSU, still ranked as high as No. 20 in three national polls despite being swept by Ole Miss over the weekend, didn’t designate its starting pitcher Monday.
Photo by CHRIS REICH, Northwestern State
