The Illini softball team’s early season, warm-weather weekend getaways will continue this weekend.

Head coach Terri Sullivan’s team will travel to Boca Raton, Fla., this weekend for the Florida Atlantic University Pepsi Classic.

The Classic is a six-team, round-robin tournament featuring a single elimination bracket on Sunday.

Illinois (5-5) will play Texas Tech and Jacksonville on Friday, the first day of round robin play. Saturday afternoon, the Illini will face Bethune Cookman and host school Florida Atlantic. The round robin will determine Sunday’s bracket.

“Our goal for this weekend is a sweep,” Sullivan said.

Friday’s first opponent, the Red Raiders, finished last season 19-35 but have started this season 6-4. The Florida Atlantic Owls are hitting just .231 on the season, but their team 2.10 ERA has helped them to a 5-5 start.

“You can’t worry too much about your opponent, winners win games, period,” Sullivan said. “With the schedule we are playing, if we play our game on offense and defense, we want to keep positioning ourselves to move up the ladder and get in to the top 20. We have the opportunity with the challenges we have on our schedule.”

The Illini returned to practice this week after last weekend’s Louisville Desert Classic in Las Vegas.

“We had a real good week of preparation,” Sullivan said. “And this week we spent a lot of time on our defense, which we do think is a strength of ours, but it is not quite where we want it to be.”

The Illini dropped three of five games last weekend, including Sunday’s 6-4 loss to UNLV. Sullivan said she thought her team came out flat against the Running Rebels.

“The great thing about our team is that the coaching staff doesn’t even really need to be the one to call the team out on that,” Sullivan said.

“(The players) have the love of the game, a lot of passion for it, and they have the willingness to look in the mirror and say ‘OK, we didn’t have the intangibles and we can control that.’ They addressed it themselves and we won’t see that happen again.”