The future could hold an all-Southwest Louisiana Non-select Division III championship series next week at the state baseball tournament. But at the present, No. 3 South Beauregard and No. 4 Westlake face a pair of challenging semifinal road series to get to Sulphur next week.

Westlake (26-10) must travel to a loaded No. 1 Sterlington (31-7) for a second consecutive year. The series starts at 6 p.m. today. South Beauregard (24-10) gets a rematch with No. 2 Erath (23-11), starting with Game 1 at 6 p.m. Friday.

The Bobcats beat the Golden Knights 15-3 in Longville on March 11. But the loss proved to be a turning point as South Beauregard won 10 of 12 games to close out the regular season.

“Kids are excited to play them again,” South Beauregard head coach Jeremy Deville said. “It was a weird game. We did not play well at every phase. It was an uncharacteristic game for us.

“I think that helped us in a lot of phases, and we got better because of that. Kind of an eye-opener for us. We started playing better baseball.”

Since losing their regional playoff opener 9-5 to Loreauville, the Knights’ pitching staff has allowed two runs, both unearned. Christian Wold has led the way with 13 1/3 shutout innings, while driving in seven runs at the plate.

Deville said the Knights won’t make any big changes in preparation for the rematch.

“At this point in the season you don’t want to reinvent the wheel or anything,” Deville said. “You just want to keep doing what got you here.

“We have to pitch well. We’ve got to get ahead in counts and play good defense. That’s two strengths. When we pitch and play clean defense, we have a great chance to win when we do that. And apply pressure on offense as much as we can.”

The Panthers swept the Rams in two games in the quarterfinals last year before losing 7-4 to South Beauregard in the final.

“We’ve got to dodge big blows from the meat of their order,” Reed said. “You know, they have a Baylor commit (Miller Sheets), they have an LSU commit (Devin Downs), a (Louisiana-Monroe) commit (Travis Adams), and a Northwestern (State) commit (Brody Belanger) all in the lineup. And, you know, we’ve got to limit traffic on the bases when those guys are up.”

Westlake will make its first appearance in the semifinals since its state championship in 1996.

In four postseason games, the Rams’ offense has been strong, outscoring Lakeside and Kaplan 45-13, while pitchers Hadley Hardesty and Brayden Spears have combined for 23 strikeouts and a 1.82 earned run average in 23 innings

“I think we’re playing really good ball,” Reed said. “I think our team has been very well-rounded the last few weeks, offensively, defensively, on the mound.”