DENTON -- After spending three of the first four weekends at tournaments throughout the state of Texas, the Mean Green are finally returning to Lovelace Stadium to open up Conference USA play against Southern Mississippi this weekend.
"We're happy to start off conference at home and we're excited about big crowds," junior Lacy Gregory said. "It's good that we get an extended week of practice. We got to have our two off days and have four practices to prepare for this weekend."
The Golden Eagles (10-8) got off to a hot start but have cooled down the past two weeks. In their last tournament at Alabama, Southern Miss went 1-3 with a 5-2 win against Michigan State.
Similarly, the Mean Green (11-8) started off with a scorching 8-1 record, which earned the best start in program history. Since then, North Texas has struggled against ranked teams such as No. 15 Texas Tech and then-ranked No. 21 Baylor. However, North Texas picked up a monumental win against No. 11 Louisiana-Lafayette in the Baylor Invitational.
"That stretch of our schedule was tough," North Texas coach Rodney DeLong said. "There's a reason we play it. It's good for us and it's good to play teams that hit back and challenge us. Now, we'll be able to come back and play in front of our home crowd. We're excited."
C-USA softball has sort of been a surprise this year with the emergence of North Texas, Southern Miss and Louisiana Tech -- who is receiving votes in the USA Today Coaches poll right now.
That makes this opening series all the more important for an exciting North Texas squad.
A series victory would not only give the Mean Green an early edge in the C-USA standings, but it would also give this dangerous North Texas team momentum to roll with.
The Mean Green have performed well on offense this year, with four players batting over .300 and a team batting average of .301.
Katie Clark leads the Mean Green with an outstanding batting average of .500, while Gregory -- who was named last week's C-USA player of the week -- sports a .444 average, 1.292 OPS and a team-leading four home runs.
Hope Trautwein has been dominant as the main pitcher on the mound for North Texas. Trautwein is 7-2 with a 1.72 ERA while freshman pitcher Bailey Tindell has a 2.67 ERA.
However, the Mean Green have struggled on defense. Last weekend in a loss to Texas-Arlington, UNT committed six errors. DeLong is positive North Texas will continue to improve on defense and become a better team.
"As we get better defensively, we'll get more consistent against good teams," DeLong said.
North Texas will start a doubleheader on Saturday at 1 p.m. and Sunday's game will start at noon.
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