The North Texas men’s basketball team will face the top team in the Sun Belt Conference on Thursday when South Alabama comes to the Super Pit.

USA (17-3) has won 13 straight games and is 8-0 in league play. The Jaguars have not lost a game since falling to Vanderbilt in double overtime on Nov. 29 and is receiving votes in both the Associated Press and ESPN/USA Today top 25 polls.

“South Alabama is one of the top teams in the country right now,” UNT head coach Johnny Jones said. “They beat Mississippi State, which is unbeaten in the South-eastern Conference.”

USA has had its share of close games in league play, including a 65-61 squeaker over Western Kentucky earlier in the season, but comes into its game against the Mean Green off a 71-33 win over Denver.

The Pioneers beat the Mean Green earlier in the season.

USA has been a force in the Sun Belt the last three seasons, but might have its best team this year. The Jaguars finished 24-7 under former head coach John Pelphrey and advanced to the NCAA Tournament in the 2005-06 season before finishing 20-12 and advancing to the NIT last year.

Pelphrey left for Arkansas after his second straight 20-win campaign with the Jaguars, who haven’t skipped a beat under Ronnie Arrow. The Texas State graduate coached USA from 1987-94 and came back for a second stint at the school this season after eight seasons at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

This week’s game will mark the first time Jones has faced Arrow as a head coach.

“He’s a good coach who has done a tremendous job with his teams,” Jones said. “He started Corpus’ program from scratch. He is blessed and fortunate this time is that he is taking over a team with two all-conference players in [Demetric] Bennett and [Daon] Merrit. When you take guys like that and bring in a coach who understands the school and league, it helps. He has done an excellent job with his team.”

UNT lost its only game against USA last season in overtime.

Jones: UNT needs to improve on both ends

When Jones takes a look at back at UNT’s current three-game slide, he can see statistical evidence as to why the Mean Green has gone into a slump. He can also see the result of that slump in the way his team is carrying itself.

“The big thing is we need to work on executing,” Jones said. “If you look at our field goal percentage and defensive field goal percentage, there has been a drop-off. We have to get better. We have three big games at home coming up and need to have that make a difference.”

UNT was shooting 47.0 percent from the field while holding its opponents to 41.1 percent after beating Louisiana-Lafayette for its third straight win on Jan. 12. Those totals have slipped to 46.1 percent and 42.6 percent, respectively, over the Mean Green’s recent three-game slide that has affected UNT’s confidence.

“We need to get that swagger back so that we are a more confident team,” Jones said.

Howerton coming on for Mean Green

Junior center Justin Howerton has seen his role expand over UNT’s last two games and has responded with a pair of productive outings.

Howerton finished with three points, four rebounds and a steal in 11 minutes during a loss to Florida Atlantic last week and came back to finish with four points, five rebounds, two steals and a block in a loss to Middle Tennessee.

UNT has been forced to turn to Howerton after a series of injuries have slowed down starter Keith Wooden. Jones said he doesn’t know if the senior will get back to full strength while playing on a pair of sprained ankles for the remainder of his senior season.

“Justin really gave us some good minutes and that is what we are looking for from him,” Jones said. “With the injury to Keith, it has given him more time on the floor. In the last two and a half weeks, he has been one of our most improved players.”

Women’s basketball

UNT looks to build on recent run at home

UNT has won three out of its last four games and played well for a half in a blowout loss to traditional Sun Belt Conference power Middle Tennessee last week.

The Mean Green will look to build on that run this week when it begins a three-game homestand at the Super Pit. UNT will take on South Alabama on Thursday before facing Florida International on Saturday.

UNT beat Louisiana-Lafayette, New Orleans and Florida Atlantic before being blown out by MTSU 89-50. UNT led for much of the first half and only trailed 35-29 at the break before the Lady Raiders got on a roll.

“The three straight allowed us to play that half at Middle,” UNT head coach Tina Slinker said. “It’s a fragile game. We only had nine turnovers the first half and 19 the second half. We proved to ourselves that we can play to that level. I want to take those three games and that half and build some momentum.”

UNT enters its home stretch in fourth place in the Sun Belt Conference West Division standings and has a chance to make a move toward the top of the division in the second half of conference play to secure a home game in the first round of the conference tournament.

“We have an opportunity to secure a home game,” Slinker said. “Looking back at last year, it is pretty customary that the home team wins the first round game. We would like to do more than that, but we need to at least do that.”

Jacksonventures out beyond arc

UNT junior forward Amber Jackson showed a new weapon in her offensive arsenal in the Mean Green’s loss to Middle Tennessee last week.

Jackson hit the first two 3-pointers of her career and went 2-for-4 from behind the arc. The former Indiana high school standout previously had taken just six 3-pointers in her career and missed all of them.

“If Amber adds that to her game she will be pretty tough to stop,” Slinker said. “Most people will give her that shot.”

Slinker said Jackson is still at her best offensively inside of 15 feet from the basket.

FIU game moved up

UNT’s game against Florida International on Saturday that was originally scheduled for 5 p.m. has pushed to 4:35 p.m. to accommodate an ESPN Regional broadcast of the game, in addition to the FIU-UNT men’s game, which will follow at 7:05 p.m.

Tennis

UNT splits first 2 matches

UNT picked up its first win of the season and very nearly knocked off Rice in its opening weekend of dual matches.

The Mean Green faced Rice in its first match of the week and had the Owls on the ropes before Rice came back to win the final two singles flights and the match 4-3. Rachel Wilhelm and Amy Joubert both took their singles matches to the third set and fell 6-4.

A win in either spot would have given the Mean Green the match.

“Our kids were disappointed after the Rice match,” UNT head coach Sujay Lama said. “Rice is nationally ranked every year. It was a good sign that they were disappointed. They felt like they belonged.”

Lama said UNT played not to lose instead of being aggressive late in the match, which ended up hurting the Mean Green.

“North Texas played hard and competed tough,” Rice head coach Roger White said. “ Sujay Lama has done an excellent job with their program.”

UNT came back from that loss to hammer Stephen F. Austin 7-0. UNT swept all of its singles matches in two sets.

The win put the Mean Green in position to equal its win total from all of last season heading into a match at UT-Arlington today. UNT finished 2-19 in Lama’s first season.

Softball

Muller named to preseason All-Sun Belt Conference team

Senior shortstop Katya Muller was named to the Preseason All-Sun Belt Conference team Tuesday when UNT was picked to finish seventh in the nine-team league.

Muller was a first-team All-Sun Belt pick last season when she led the Mean Green with 63 hits and finished second with a .332 batting average.

UNT finished 22-36 last season, including a 10-14 mark in Sun Belt play. The Mean Green finished seventh out of nine teams in the league.

Louisiana-Lafayette was a near unanimous pick to win the conference title, receiving eight of the nine first-place votes. Florida Atlantic received one first-place vote.

ULL senior designated player Holly Tankersley was named the preseason player of the year, while Western Kentucky pitcher Jen-nifer Kempf was named the pitcher of the year.

Track and field

UNT takes step forward at Razorback Invitational

UNT head coach Rick Watkins was hoping the Mean Green would be able to build on a solid debut performance at the Razorback Invitational in Fayetteville, Ark., last week.

UNT did just that while posting a couple of impressive performances in its second meet of the year. Brandi Stanfield finished fourth in the triple jump with a leap of 40-9 1/2, nine inches better than in her first meet of the season.

Standfield was one of 20 UNT athletes who improved on their season-opening marks.

“We started out at a high level at [Texas] Tech and wanted to improve in our second meet,” Watkins said. “We improved, but we didn’t get as many top-five finishes as we would have liked.”

UNT has still posted some of the top marks in the Sun Belt this season. Watkins said between six and eight of his athletes on both the men’s and women’s teams rank among the top three in the Sun Belt Conference in their event.

UNT has just two more meets over three weeks before the conference meet at Middle Tennessee in Murfreesboro on Feb. 23-24.

“We feel really good about where we are,” Watkins said. “We have several young athletes [and] we want them to understand how competitive they can be.”

Wiggins closing on NCAA qualifying standard

Junior Lauren Wiggins is closing rapidly on the NCAA qualifying standard in the 60-meter hurdles.

Wiggins posted a time of 8.46 in both the preliminaries and finals of the event at the Razorback Invita-tional and came up just short of the provisional qualifying standard of 8.43.

Wiggins broke her own school record in the event and will have three more chances to meet the provisional and automatic qualifying standards in the event in the next few weeks. If Wiggins meets the provisional mark, she will have a chance to be selected for an at-large berth in the NCAA national meet.

“I think she has a really good chance,” Watkins said. “We have a few other athletes with a chance as well.”

Watkins said junior high jumper Toby Edwards is among the other athletes he expects to compete for a NCAA berth.

Player of the week

The UNT tennis team came close to having a perfect opening week of dual match play, thanks in part to a spotless performance from Idalina Franca.

The senior won both of her singles matches last week in showdowns with Rice and Stephen F. Austin and teamed with Narine Kazarova to win a pair of doubles matches.

For her performance in both matches, Franca is the Denton Record-Chronicle UNT Player of the Week.

BRETT VITO can be reached at 940-566-6870. His e-mail address is bvito@dentonrc.com .