Volleyball Hoosiers face road woes

Friendly confines anywhere in the Big Ten? Hardly.\nWell, sometimes. Sometimes far from it.\nThe women's volleyball team has yet to find any gymnasium, hall or arena overly cordial, not even their home turf -- University Gym.\nIU sputters in Bloomington, then glitters the following night. The Hoosiers evened their home Big Ten record at 3-3 with Saturday's win against Michigan. That was followed by a clumsy, uninspired loss to No. 23 Michigan State.\nBut the road hasn't been so affable. Not even close. IU has managed only one road triumph in six tries thus far in conference play -- that win coming against the team that has spent this season scraping the mildew of the Big Ten's basement walls, Northwestern. The Wildcats are a meager 1-11 in the league.\nIn five road Big Ten losses, the Hoosiers (13-9, 4-8 in Big Ten play) have won only two games, both against Michigan. Wisconsin, Michigan State, Penn State and Ohio State all befuddled the Hoosiers 3-0.\nThe reason is simple: Battling hundreds of miles from Bloomington isn't enviable.\n"It's tough to play away," sophomore setter Laurie Gardner said. "But we can't use that as an excuse. It's tough to win on the road against any team, but we need to come up with some road wins."\nGardner deflects excuses, but IU's road counterparts haven't been slouches. All five of the schools that hogtied the Hoosiers were ranked in the top 25 at one point in the season, and only Michigan has fallen out. The good news is those conference-leading squads swing through southern Indiana this time in the Big Ten schedule.\n"If you look at our losses on the road, they're at ranked teams," coach Katie Weismiller said. "Our performance hasn't been up to what we want it to be, but we've also been playing some tough competition."\nThe road miseries aren't foreign territory for Weismiller and her troops. IU went 4-6 on the road in conference play a year ago and won only one Big Ten road game in 1998. That year, however, the Hoosiers went an impressive 8-2 at home, losing to only No. 6 Wisconsin and No. 2 Penn State.\nWisconsin now sits at No. 5; the Badgers bounced IU in three games early this season. IU shot out to a 2-1 lead in Ann Arbor, but fizzled, losing to Michigan, who dropped out of the Top 25 two weeks before hosting IU. No. 11 Penn State flattened the Hoosiers in three games, and No. 13 Ohio State handed IU its worst defeat of the season; the Hoosiers tallied a measly 15 points the entire match, hitting only 0.119. IU has had to continually attempt to dig itself out of early holes in previous road matches.\n"You can't get down in the beginning," freshman middle blocker Melissa Brewer said. "If you start out on top on the road, it's a lot easier to stay on top."\nSolutions to the problem come in bunches -- act like the opposing fans are cheering for you, block them out entirely, focus only on your side of the net. Weismiller said the team's mental approach is the fundamental hurdle. Whatever it takes, IU needs something to boost its road performances through the Big Ten's second half if any hopes of post-season play are granted. \n"I think it's mostly mental," Brewer said of the road doldrums. "We need to prepare ourselves for being in a different environment"