Scoring woes continue as team battles for postseason berth

The women's soccer team thought the problem was solved.\nThey thought they could score.\nBut now, in a fight for a postseason, the Hoosiers are desperate for a goal.\n"We need a goal," freshman forward Shelly Gruszka said. "We're creating the chances, but we just need to put one through."\nThe Hoosiers have sulked through the first seven games of the Big Ten season with a 1-5-1 record, good enough for ninth place in the conference. They are one point behind eighth-place Iowa, with three games remaining. The top eight teams make the Big Ten tournament November 3-5 at the University of Illinois.\n As their record indicates, the Hoosiers' problem has been being able to score. Through seven conference games, IU has scored just four goals compared to their opponents' 12.\n "I don't have the answer," coach Joe Kelley said about the problems. "Maybe I should. I don't know. We've been doing everything right."\n To put the scoring woes in perspective, the Hoosiers scored three of their four goals in one game -- a 3-2 win against Ohio State. Subtract that win, IU's only conference triumph, and the Hoosiers have scored one goal in six games.\nThe Hoosiers have been outshot in conference play 99-77 and have put 20 fewer shots on goal in their seven games.\n"The mental thing may be that we'll never score," Kelley said. "But we're creating opportunities. It's not like we're not close. We're right there. We just need to work a little harder and finish.\n"We're not done." \nBut the inability to score in Big Ten games has been something the Hoosiers have grown accustomed to. Last year, IU scored four times on its way to a 2-4-4 Big Ten record. Of those four goals, one is by a player now on the IU roster, as junior midfielder Stacey Peterson scored in a 2-1 loss to Penn State.\nThe problem seemed solved as the Hoosiers rolled through the 1999 non-conference schedule outscoring their opponents 14-1, on the way to a 5-0 record.\nThe Hoosiers outshot those five opponents 72-44. \nOnce the Big Ten season started and the competitiveness of the teams increased, the IU offense became stagnant.\nFreshman midfielder Emily Hotz, who has 20 shots in Big Ten play but only one goal, said she thinks the Hoosiers need to believe they can score in order to break out of their funk.\n"We need to keep pushing and not get down on ourselves," Hotz said. "We've been practicing great, but now we're getting down to it. We need to score -- now.\n"It's all or nothing"