DENTON — After more than a week off, the Mean Green Tennis team returns to the court on Friday for the first of two home Conference USA matches this weekend.

The Mean Green host conference foe FIU at 2:00 p.m. on Friday and Marshall on Sunday at 11:00 a.m. Due to the weather, Friday’s match versus the Panthers has been moved to the Las Colinas Country Club located at 4400 N. O’Connor Rd. Irving, TX, 75062.

“It was great to have some time to get rested and work on fundamentals as well as fine tune our fitness,” said head coach Sujay Lama. “We are looking forward to playing conference opponents. Both FIU and Marshall have always been two of the best teams in the conference and well coached.”

North Texas (3-4) enters Friday’s match with a 1-0 record against C-USA teams this season. They defeated Louisiana Tech on Jan. 27 with a 5-2 win in what was the home opener.

However, the Panthers present a different challenge but are an opportunity for the Mean Green to stake their claim as one of the best teams in C-USA.

FIU (4-1) reached the finals of the 2017 conference tournament before losing to Rice in the championship match. The Panthers feature the No. 2 ranked singles player in the country in Andrea Lazaro. She is 4-1 on the year and has won three-straight singles matches.

The Panthers have been dominate this year in doubles. They own an overall dual match doubles record of 10-3 and their No. 1 doubles team of Ulyana Grib and Maryna Veksler are ranked No. 7 in the country.

North Texas returns to the court after coming off a laborious three-match road trip that had the Mean Green play three power-five schools in six days.

After the strenuous trip, Lama was very pleased with how hard his team competed and played through the fatigue and believes the young team is on the verge of taking a big step forward.

Junior Tamuna Kutubidze has already shown to have taken that step, as she’s off to her best start with a 5-1 record. The Mean Green’s No. 2 singles player lost her first match of the year last week versus Oklahoma but has made waves by leading a team with no seniors to a couple impressive early season wins.

Lama is looking at this weekend to be a springboard that propels the Mean Green to a hot stretch of matches in March where they’ll play six in two weeks and as an opportunity for UNT to pick up some serious momentum.

“Our goal is solely on preparation and to compete as hard as we can,” Lama said. “We know we are close to breaking through and making a nice run.”