North Texas Daily

The tennis team came out of the weekend with a pair of Conference USA wins against Louisiana Tech University and the University of Texas-San Antonio that extended their win streak to four.

“We’ve found that winning feeling, what it takes to win,” Head coach Sujay Lama said. “We just can’t let up.” 

They started off Friday with a fairly dominant affair against Louisiana Tech (7-9). While the Lady Techsters put up a fight in doubles, the Mean Green (6-9, C-USA 2-1) was able to finish them off with the pair of freshman Saki Oyama and sophomore Sophia Hummel winning their match 7-5.

The Mean Green rode their momentum from doubles into singles, as they captured several decisive set wins over Louisiana Tech with junior Maria Ponomareva quickly finishing her match 6-1, 6-1. Junior Lucie Devier followed her up with a 6-2, 6-2 win and senior Nidhi Surapaneni finished the shut out, winning 6-2, 6-3. 

“We all played really good today in singles,” Devier said. “We just killed it. We had a good mentality and a good rhythm today.”

The team then traveled to the Alamo City to face off Texas-San Antonio (7-9), who shocked the Mean Green by dominating the doubles point. 

Down by a score of 1-0, North Texas traded singles wins with the Roadrunners until finally, things were tied 3-3 with Devier heading into a third set. Devier proceeded to play statistically one of her best sets this season, clinching the match for her team 6-4, 6-7 and 6-0.

“This is amazing, it’s the best feeling I’ve ever had since I’ve been at UNT,” Devier said.

After playing through a rough stretch of the season, Surapaneni believes that they are finally finding their groove as the vibe of the team has improved immensely over the win streak.

“Whenever we lose […] it is just so depressing,” Surapaneni said. “But we’ve been playing so well recently, if we continue what we’re doing it’ll be really good for us.”

Lama says he definitely noticed that the energy of the team today was much better than it has been, noting the ability of the team to figure out how to win instead of resigning themselves to losing.

“There were situations that because we are on a streak, we found ways to win versus ways to lose,” Lama said. 

The head coach hopes that they can extend this energy into the next three matches and then into the conference tournament, which is three weeks away.

“We have three more big matches at home and hopefully, we can make some magic happen,” Lama said. “Then we’ll have the engine on full throttle pre-conference.

Up Next: The Mean Green returns to their home court to take on Tulsa University (9-4, American Athletic Conference 3-0) in Denton on April 3.

Featured Image: Freshman Saki Oyama begins her serve during tennis practice on Feb. 21, 2021. Image by Zach Del Bello