The North Texas athletics department is dealing with seven active coronavirus cases following its latest round of testing that was completed late this week.
UNT has seen its case count drop in each of the last two weeks after a significant spike. The school had 30 active cases on Nov. 8.
The number dipped to nine last week.
UNT has had 86 members of its department recover from an infection, up nine from last week. The school has conducted 10,425 tests.
UNT has not released its testing figures publicly. An athletics department source provided them to the Denton Record-Chronicle on Sunday afternoon.
UNT officials distributed a list of eight players who would be unavailable for its football team’s game against Rice on Saturday just before kickoff. Those players were ruled out for a variety of reasons, including coronavirus infections, contact tracing protocols and injuries.
UNT’s program has been hit hard by the pandemic and had five games either canceled or postponed due to the fallout from the pandemic. The Mean Green went 34 days without playing before taking on Rice after their previous three games were either canceled or postponed.
UNT has three games left in the regular season after improving to 3-3 on the year and 2-2 in Conference USA play with its 27-17 win over Rice.
The school will soon face the challenge of handling the pandemic during the beginning of basketball season as well as the closing weeks of the football season.
The UNT women’s team will open its campaign with a home game against Tarleton State on Wednesday. The school’s men’s basketball team will face Mississippi Valley State in its season-opener on Thursday.
UNT continues to deal with uncertainty as it moves into one of the busiest times of its sports year. The school was not certain if it would get its game against Rice in until late in the week.
UNT also held its senior day ceremony before it faced Rice, even though it still has a home game scheduled against Louisiana Tech on Dec. 3
The school is set to complete the football season and begin its basketball campaigns at a time its coronavirus case count is declining.
“I feel really good about where we are at,” UNT football coach Seth Littrell said during his weekly Tuesday press conference. “I feel as good as I have in a while.”
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