Hoosiers look to fill scoring void left by losses

The winds of change have hit the IU women's basketball team not only on the coaching level, but with the players as well. \nGone from last year's squad are three starters -- Cyndi Valentin, Jenny DeMuth and Angela Hawkins.\n"We have a lot of players on the team that haven't played in the college game yet or been the main factor in the game," said sophomore Whitney Thomas.\nHowever, the Hoosiers do return two starters, Thomas and junior Nikki Smith, who have been joined by seniors Leah Enterline and Carrie Smith, as well as sophomore Kim Roberson as the starting five early in this season.\n"I think we're very young, and I think we were all role players last year," Nikki Smith said. "We're just now adjusting to a new offense, a new defense and us being the players who are going to be making a majority of the plays. I think it's all a learning process right now. It takes time."\nGone for the Hoosiers are the creators of 670 out of the 974 points the Hoosiers scored last season -- more than two-thirds of their offensive output.\n"I think this year is 100 percent different from last year," Nikki Smith said. "Last year we relied on Cyndi and Jenny a lot for our scoring. We put all the pressure on them. If they didn't have a good game, we all didn't have a good game. I think this year everything is spread out. You can have games where one person scores 15, another scores one, and the next day it's totally reversed."\nAs for the new coach, Felisha Legette-Jack said she doesn't make a distinction between the players who started last year and those who didn't.\n"None of them started for me, so I don't give them any more power than the others," Legette-Jack said. "... As far as we're concerned, they're all on the same page, they're an 11-headed monster, and we're all in this thing together."\nHaving a new coach, as well as three new starters who have to fill the sneakers left by the graduated offensive stars of last season, creates an interesting task for the Hoosiers.\n"This is new for all of us, but especially the players who have never played college basketball before," Enterline said. "It's not something where you can tell them anything to or make them feel better about. It's something they have to experience."\nLegette-Jack said she is well-aware of the impact of last year's seniors, who turned the Hoosiers around from 10-18 two seasons ago to 19-14 last year and led IU to a spot in the WNIT quarterfinals. She said she recognizes the program records departed DeMuth and Valentin set, but that she knows they are no longer at IU and the other players will now have to step up.\n"I don't want to underwrite Cyndi Valentin and her efforts," Legette-Jack said. "However three of the four leading scorers have all graduated. This gives us an opportunity to begin again together"