Hoosiers travel to Indy for Big Ten tournament

With the book officially closed on the regular season, the IU women's basketball team (15-12, 9-7) has completed an impressive one-year turnaround. The Hoosiers hope the resurgence continues as they begin Big Ten Tournament play Thursday against Michigan at Conseco Fieldhouse. \nLast season, the team finished 10-18 overall and 3-13 in the Big Ten before a loss to Wisconsin in the first round of the conference tournament. \nThis season, the Hoosiers claimed five more wins overall and six more in the Big Ten -- a feat that has garnered them the No. 6 seed in the tournament. The seeding is the highest for the Hoosiers since 2002, when, as the No. 5 seed, they became the lowest seeded team to win the tournament.\nAfter a long and grueling\nseason, sophomore guard Nikki Smith said she knows that replicating that achievement will require considerable focus and determination from the entire team.\n"We have to keep mentally focused," she said. "It's toward the end of the season, our bodies are tired. We have to stay together and stay focused. We have to be sure that our team as a whole is together and has the one goal in mind that we want to go as far as we can."\nIU coach Sharon Versyp said the strain of a long season was evident in the final two games of the season as the lackluster Hoosier team dropped both games. However, she said she expects the team to be refreshed and at the top of its game by tournament time. \n"We have good confidence," she said. "It was a tough road, but we played well. We have some concern of not letting someone go on a run. You've got to make sure that you're staying composed. If they go on a run, we've got to answer and we didn't do that the last two games."\nWhile Versyp said she hopes her team has learned something from previous games, she said she knows that once the tournament starts, records no longer matters. \n"It's anybody's tournament," Versyp said. "It's a new season for everybody, records don't matter. We've always played hard, but our last couple games we haven't played with that passion and emotion and excitement. It's been depleted, so we've got to come back and get that."\nTo be successful, the Hoosiers expect major contributions from three players whose efforts earned the trio All-Big Ten honors. Senior guard Cyndi Valentin, IU's leading scorer with 18.1 points per game, was a consensus first team All-Big Ten pick. Their leading rebounder and second-leading scorer, senior forward Jenny DeMuth, was named to the second team by the conference coaches and third team by the media. Freshman forward Whitney Thomas became the first Hoosier selected for the All-Big Ten freshman team since Valentin earned the honor in 2003. \nValentin credits her performance and IU's improvement to the confidence Versyp has brought to the program in her first year. \n"Coach Versyp instills that confidence in us," Valentin said. "We know what we're capable of and it's just believing and having confidence in each other, which I think we have"