MIAMI — The North Texas tennis team continued its hot streak on Saturday, but Marshall didn't make it easy. However, when you're rolling you find ways to grind out wins.

And that's exactly what they did Saturday.

The Mean Green (8-4) beat the Thundering Herd 4-3 in a neutral site in Miami. UNT has now won six of its last seven and remains unbeaten against Conference USA opponents. 

"All credit to Marshall," said head coach Sujay Lama. "They were prepared and they outplayed us for most parts. We were fortunate to squeak out the victory."

On Saturday, North Texas won its seventh-straight doubles point as they picked up victories at the No.1 and No. 2 spot in the lineup. The No. 26 nationally ranked Maria Kononova and Tamuna Kutubidze won their doubles match 6-4 on Saturday. It is the closest doubles match they've had all year as they improved to 6-0 on the season. Prior to Saturday, they hadn't had a match closer than 6-1.

The narrow victory at No. 1 set a tone for the rest of the match as Marshall (2-9) took the Mean Green's doubles point streak to the brink after winning 6-1 at No. 3.  

Ivana Babic and Alexandra Heczey secured what later turned out to be a very important doubles victory with a 7-6 tiebreaker win at the No. 2 spot and extended UNT's doubles point streak and gave them a 1-0 lead in Saturday's match. 

With the important 1-0 lead, UNT needed to win just three of the six singles matches to claim the win over Marshall.

Those three wins, came at the top and the bottom of the lineup as what's started to be a trend.
Senior Maria Kononova picked up her sixth-straight singles win with a 6-3, 6-1 straight set win. Fellow senior Tamuna Kutubidze followed with her ninth win of the season, as she also beat her counterpart 6-3, 6-1. 

Also picking up a singles win was Babic at the No.6 spot in the lineup. 

Babic, who has had a breakout junior season, kept it going on Saturday as she won 6-3, 6-0. It is her seventh singles win of the season. That's four more singles wins than she had in her first two seasons in Denton combined.

During North Texas' current streak of winning six of its last seven, Saturday's 4-3 victory is the closest of the six wins by a long shot. In the five previous wins, UNT hadn't had a narrower victory than its 6-1 win over Sam Houston State on Feb. 8. All the four other wins were by shutout fashion. 

Saturday's match was also the Mean Green's first match on the road in four weeks and their first match outside of the state of Texas in 40 days. 

With Saturday's win, North Texas is now one win shy of matching last season's win total. They'll go for that one more win on Sunday when they face the defending conference champion Florida International Panthers in Miami at 11 a.m. CT. 

"We have to have everyone invested and prepared tomorrow for us to be successful," Lama said. "Hopefully we learned our lesson today."

Singles competition
1. #57 Tamuna Kutubidze (NT) def. Anna Smith (MAR) 6-3, 6-1
2. Maria Kononova (NT) def. Victoria Walter (MAR) 6-3, 6-1
3. Daniela Dankanych (MAR) def. Alexandra Heczey (NT) 6-3, 7-5
4. Madi Ballow (MAR) def. Nidhi Surapaneni (NT) 7-5, 6-3
5. Liz Stefancic (MAR) def. #114 Minying Liang (NT) 6-4, 6-4
6. Ivana Babic (NT) def. Matilde Mulatero (MAR) 6-3, 6-0

Doubles competition
1. #26 Tamuna Kutubidze/Maria Kononova (NT) def. Daniela Dankanych/Anna Smith (MAR) 6-4
2. Ivana Babic/Alexandra Heczey (NT) def. Madi Ballow/Liz Stefancic (MAR) 7-6
3. Matilde Mulatero/Victoria Walter (MAR) def. Minying Liang/Nidhi Surapaneni (NT) 6-1