THIBODAUX, La. – The Nicholls State University baseball team closes out the 2013 regular season this Thursday-Saturday on the road, traveling to face the Lamar Cardinals in the last Southland Conference series of the season at Vincent-Beck Stadium in Beaumont, Texas.

All three games of the series will be aired on KTIB 640 AM in Thibodaux, with live stats provided by LamarCardinals.com, and links to both on the front page of GeauxColonels.com.

Even after its struggles when conference play began in March, the Colonels head into its biggest weekend of the year still one game back of McNeese State for the final spot in the league tournament at Constellation Field beginning next week. Nicholls and McNeese both won its respective series last weekend to keep the deficit the same.

At 25-27 on the year and 8-16 in league play, Nicholls will take on Lamar in Beaumont while the Cowboys (22-27, 9-15) will host Southeastern Louisiana in Lake Charles. For the Colonels to qualify, they must finish tied or ahead of McNeese State in the standings by the end of the day Saturday. Neither team can finish higher than eighth, with Central Arkansas holding on to the seventh spot.

The Colonels are coming off of a 2-1 series win over the Northwestern State Demons over the weekend, in a challenging set that had the team play in two different venues after bad weather forced the team to readjust its plans for the series. The two teams split a doubleheader on Saturday, while the Colonels pulled out the victory on Sunday with a shutout of NSU in the rubber game.

On Saturday, Nicholls won its first extra-inning game of the season, defeating the Demons 4-3 in the 12th on a walk-off single by Keith Cormier, but dropped the second game 7-2 for force a pivotal game three with huge implications at Segnette Field. Nicholls played some of its best defense of the year back at Ray E. Didier Field and got a timely hit on senior day by senior outfielder Matt Richard to pace the Colonels to a 3-0 win in the last home game of the season.

Nicholls got a big week from junior second baseman Philip Lyons who hit .417 during the series and .438 for the week with seven hits, two RBI and two runs scored. Lyons currently sports the longest hitting streak on the team at six games, while reaching base safely in the last five. Infielder Tyler Duplantis continues to remain steady at the plate, leading the team with a .318 average and .361 mark in his last ten games with 13 total hits.

With the Nicholls offense getting hot at the right time, no group is more ready for the help than the Nicholls pitching staff. The run support will be crucial in this weekend's series as the team got solid performances from Kory Delange and Brandon Jackson last week, with Mike Suk making his return to the lineup for this weekend.

Delange pitched a season-high 11 innings last week in the opener, and although he didn't get the win he walked just one batter with six strikeouts in the no-decision, helping the Colonels keep the Demons at bay to give the team a chance to earn the win late. On that Sunday, Jackson pitched his second complete-game shutout of the conference season with four hits and three walks with an opposing batting average under .150.

The Colonels outhit the Demons 23-22 over the course of the series, as the Nicholls defense only turned two errors on the weekend, keeping the Demons from scoring easy runs on miscues.

Lamar was one of the hottest teams in the league midway through the season, but more recently saw its regular season hopes vanish due to a rash of injuries to fall to 34-17  and 13-11 in league plan, with none more important than pitcher Eric Harrington who will sit out the rest of the season due to a torn muscle. Harrington was 7-1 on the season with a 2.38 earned run average at the top of the rotation.

As a team, Lamar is batting .298 with five players averaging .300 or better at the plate this season. Darian Johnson leads the team with a .373 average with 78 hits, 41 RBI and 42 runs scored, followed by Sam Bumpers' .348 average, Seth Dornak's .313 average and Aaron Olivas' and V.J. Bunner's .309 marks.

Outside of Harrington, Jonathan Dziedzic will toe the rubber in the opener with his 6-3 record and 3.43 ERA. His throwing mates for the weekend will be David Carver and Will Hibbs, who combine for a 6-3 record. The staff as a whole is giving up on average 4.24 earned runs per game, while opponents are giving up nearly six at 5.88.

First pitch for the series is set for 6:30 p.m. on Thursday in Beaumont.