Hoosiers hoping to avoid letdown against Valparaiso tonight at home

It should be a hero's return for the team that IU coach Felisha Legette-Jack calls the "11-headed monster." The IU women's basketball team returns home tonight after its 54-51 victory over the No. 15 Kentucky Wildcats on Sunday.\nThe Hoosiers (2-0) will try to defend their home court tonight against the Crusaders of Valparaiso (0-1) at 7 p.m. in Assembly Hall.\n"It was definitely a huge win. I know people didn't expect us to get that," said sophomore forward Whitney Thomas. "But it's just the same game over again except for it's reversed situations, where Valpo's coming in as the underdog. And like (Legette-Jack) said, we can't take them lightly. They're a good team, and we got to get ready to play."\nWhen the Hoosiers returned to practice Monday, Legette-Jack said she felt the intensity wasn't at the level that it should have been.\n"We didn't come back like a championship team should come back," she said. "We had a lackadaisical practice; we didn't have energy; we weren't talking. This wasn't the IU team I was expecting."\nThe Hoosiers are aware that they will have to be ready to take on the Crusaders to avoid a letdown game.\n"It's one of those things -- great win; we're all really excited about it," junior guard Nikki Smith said. "But we have to keep moving on because we don't want us to be that ones that get upset. So we want to still enjoy the win but move on and just keep playing hard."\nThe Hoosiers will be the second Big Ten team to face Valparaiso in this young season. On Friday night, the Crusaders dropped a 64-45 game to Northwestern. Even with the low score, Legette-Jack said the Mid-Continent Conference team has some offensive weapons.\n"They got a great shooter. (Carrie Myers) is a fantastic 3-point shooter from the perimeter -- she's got a quick release," she said. "Their inside 6-foot-5 kid (Tamra Braun), she's great. She can go over her right shoulder or her left shoulder, so we got to be ready to go. We got to be big, even though we're not big, and we have to change up our defense a lot for them."\nDefense has been one of the strong suits for the Hoosiers, and IU hopes the strong defensive play will continue tonight. Including two exhibition games, the Hoosiers have held their four opponents to less than 30 percent shooting from the field. In Sunday's game, IU held Kentucky shooters to 14.7 percent in the second half.\n"We're very scrappy. We just like to get on the ball and run," Smith said. "We're very quick on the perimeter, and I just think we need to keep playing hard. We know if we're tired we can have two or three people that can come off the bench and help us. I think the thing is keep playing hard and getting all over the ball."\nWhile Hoosiers boast an undefeated record that might leave some coaches satisfied, Legette-Jack said there are more things she looks at than the box score.\n"The type of team we want to have is the team that you can't look at the stats and see who hurt you," Legette-Jack said. "You have to really watch the film and really concentrate on the film. And that's showing passion and desire and loose balls and chipping a tooth on the floor because you're going after something that seems it's impossible, but you go get it anyway. \n"Those are the kind of statistics we like to keep for our team"