With the ice finally thawing from last week’s winter storms, the No. 52 TCU men’s tennis team will go into battle against No. 31 Alabama on Friday at the Bayard H. Friedman Tennis Center.

It will be the team’s fourth match of the season after a 4-3 loss against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on Jan. 29 and two 6-1 victories against UT-Arlington and UT-Pan American on Jan. 23.

Head coach David Roditi said that even though the team has had the past couple of matches canceled against Wichita State and Tulsa, it has been working hard in preparation for the upcoming match.

“Despite the weather, we have done a good job of getting indoors and getting some good practices in,” Roditi said.

In preparing for the upcoming match, senior Cameron Nash said he expected the team to be very focused while playing its own brand of tennis.

“I am going to come out and play my own style of tennis, and if I can be focused on working on myself, that will give me the best chance of winning,” Nash said.

In addition to working hard on its tennis game, Nash said the team was working to get more involved with the Fort Worth and TCU communities by getting more people to come support the team in its matches. There will be prizes, free pizza and Salsa Limon tacos given away between the doubles and singles matches.

“Our goal is to not just represent TCU but represent Fort Worth,” Cameron said. “We hope that the people around the community recognize that and support us as much as we want to support them.”

Alabama comes to Fort Worth riding a three-match winning steak. The Crimson Tide picked up a 5-1 win over Troy and a 7-0 sweep over Furman in its last doubleheader match. The Tide will travel down I-30 to SMU to play the 72nd-ranked Mustangs after their match with the Frogs.

“It is very early in the season, but we see this road trip as an important weekend for what we’d like to accomplish,” Alabama tennis coach Billy Pate said in an Alabama Athletics release.

“We’re entering a challenging stretch the next few weeks, and we’ll find out a lot about our team. Both TCU and SMU are teams that have a rich history of success with their respective tennis programs, and we’ll need to be at our best.”

TCU vs. Alabama

When: 2 p.m. today

Where: Bayard H. Friedman Tennis Center

Free pizza, Salsa Limon tacos and prizes will be given away between doubles and singles matches.