NATCHITOCHES – The last six days have been emotional at unimaginable levels for McNeese head coach Lance Guidry with the passing of his brother and grandfather in a three-day span and with funerals in back-to-back days.
 
After being away from the game of football during that time, Guidry will meet up with his Cowboys on Saturday to try to embrace some normalcy back into his life when McNeese visits long-time in-state and Southland Conference rival Northwestern State.
 
Kickoff is set for 6 p.m. at NSU's Turpin Stadium. The game will be broadcast live on the McNeese Radio Network (92.9 FM The Lake and 929thelake.com). Live video stream will be available at NSUDemons.com for a small fee.
 
The Cowboys (3-4, 2-3 SLC) have dropped two straight games, their first losing streak since the end of the 2014 season. McNeese is coming off a 35-0 loss to Central Arkansas, and prior to that, fell 31-24 at Southeastern Louisiana in the final seconds.
 
Northwestern State (1-5, 0-4), who will be celebrating its Homecoming this weekend, dropped a 32-31 heartbreaker at Lamar last Saturday.
 
Saturday's game will pit one of the top rushing defenses in the league (McNeese is ranked second at 115.4 ypg) against one of the conference's top running teams in NSU (third in the SLC at 208.8 ypg).
 
Demons' senior running back De'Mard Llorens is ranked fifth in the league with 73.2 yards rushing per game. He's racked up 366 yards on the season and has scored four touchdowns. His 6.2 yards per carry mark is the fourth-highest in the conference.
 
He's coming off a career game at Lamar where he rushed for 211 yards on 25 carries with two scores. As a team, NSU ran for 390 yards at Lamar and has eclipsed the 200-yard mark in three straight games.
 
The Cowboys surrendered the most yards on the ground this season against UCA who racked up 231 yards and scored three rushing touchdowns. Only ULL has topped 200 yards against the nation's 19^th-best rushing team when it had 220 in an eight point win back on Sept. 10.
 
Three times this year McNeese's defense has held opponents to under 100 yards including two straight times before the UCA game.
 
Offensively McNeese will be looking to break out of its recent slump both in the running game and in passing.
 
Through the first five games, the Cowboys averaged 447 yards of offense per game. That number has dropped significantly in the two game slide where McNeese averaged just 306 yards per game.
 
The lack of offense has been a stickler in the running game where McNeese is ranked last in the league with just 118 yards per game. The Cowboys have been held under 100 yards three times this season and under 150 six out of seven games.
 
On the bright side, a healthy corps made up of the Ross brothers – Ryan and Lawayne, Dylan Long, Justin Pratt and Benjamin Jones, are close to banging out of the starting gate for a break out game.
 
Behind center is quarterback James Tabary who has thrown for 1,785 yards and 12 touchdowns this season. Tabary's yardage ranks as the 17^th-most in a single season with four games still left to play.
 
McNeese has won 12 straight in the series and leads 44-20-1 in the all-time slate. The Cowboys have also won five straight in Natchitoches as the last loss to the Demons came in 2004 in Natchitoches when NSU won 47-17 on its way to a conference championship year.