DENTON — The North Texas soccer team concluded its 2018 home schedule unbeaten after shutting out Florida International 2-0 on Sunday afternoon.

The Mean Green (12-1-2, 7-0-1) took a conference-match—high 32 shots in the win and received goals from sophomore Logan Bruffett and senior Aaliyah Nolan on a penalty kick.

UNT needed Rice to beat Florida Atlantic on Sunday to clinch the regular season Conference USA championship, however, FAU won 1-0.

"It feels good to go out with a solid win," Nolan, an all-conference forward said. "I'm thankful for my time here."

With Sunday being the final home game of the year, North Texas honored its six seniors who all earned starts versus the Panthers (0-16-1, 0-8-1). 

The win is this senior class' 60th in their three-plus years at UNT, making them just the fourth senior class to win 60-plus matches. 

Though it was the final home match on the Mean Green's schedule, due to the wet weather North Texas has received over the past week, the match was once again moved to Denton Guyer High School's turf field. 

After putting up nearly 15 shots in the first 30 minutes of the match without a score, UNT finally broke through when freshman Olivia Klein had a perfect cross to sophomore Logan Bruffett inside the six and Bruffett headed the ball into the back of the net.

The goal is Bruffett's second in as many games and her second of the season. 

"We should play at Guyer more," jokingly said Bruffett, who has scored in each of the Mean Green's last two games that have been relocated to the high school. "We're really starting to come together at the end of the season. I'm glad we could send our seniors out with a shutout win."

`North Texas continued the onslaught of shots, finishing the game with 15 on goal but the next and final UNT goal came on a penalty kick. In the 81st minute, FIU was whistled for a hand-ball in the box and Nolan stepped up to take it.

The Mean Green senior from Bermuda who is the first and only international player in the program's 24-year history, blistered her shot past the Panthers goalie to give UNT the eventual 2-0 win. 

The goal is the Navarro College transfer's seventh of the year and her 14th UNT career goal. She, fellow senior Taylor Torres and sophomore Berklee Peters lead the team with seven goals each.

"I've been wanting to get on the score sheet more so I had to step up to the opportunity," Nolan said. "We had lots of opportunities today and played great in our system but had just a couple shots miss."

Sunday's home conference win also means this senior class has never lost a home conference match as the Mean Green still haven't lost a home conference match since Oct. 31, 2008 and have now gone 49 consecutive home conference matches without a loss, posting a 46-0-3 record in those 49 matches. 

North Texas and FAU sit atop the C-USA standings with 22 points each, however, the Mean Green own the tiebreaker over the Owls. UNT has two remaining matches on its regular season schedule while FAU has just one. 

The Owls are at FIU on Friday while UNT's next match is a mid-week postponed Wednesday match at Middle Tennessee. Following Wednesday's match, the Mean Green travel to Norfolk, Virginia, on Sunday Oct. 28 to play another postponed match at Old Dominion ahead of the conference tournament, which is being hosted by ODU. 

If the Mean Green win on Wednesday they'll clinch the regular season championship.

QUICK SHOTS

• North Texas is 278-23-7 all-time in matches where they score two or more goals
• Sunday's penalty kick goal was the Mean Green's first of the year.
• Senior Bailey Johnston earned her first career start on Sunday
• North Texas improves to 17-3-2 all-time versus FIU