IU opens regular season

The exhibitions are done. Now comes the game that counts.\nThe IU women's basketball team starts its regular season tonight in the Women's Sport Foundation Classic hosted by the University of Kentucky. Prior to tonight's game, the Hoosiers have gotten two exhibition wins under their belt.\n"This is when the fun starts," junior guard Nikki Smith said. "I mean, everyone likes to practice for a game to go out there and play as hard as you can because this is what you practice for. So it's just really exciting to start the season off and just get going."\nThe Hoosiers will start out the tournament playing Wake Forest University tonight at 6 p.m. The Demon Deacons are coming off of a 12-16 campaign from a season ago, but IU coach Felisha Legette-Jack said Wake Forest will be no easy task.\n"They're a fantastic program," Legette-Jack said. "Coach (Mike) Peterson's doing a great job over there at Wake Forest. He's always been a fantastic coach even when he was out at Texas Christian and Minnesota. Now he's doing a great job with Wake Forest."\nHowever, the coach said, IU is more concerned about its own game plan then its opponent's.\n"We can't really worry about Wake Forest; it's about what we're trying to do for IU," she said. "We're going to give them a little bit of attention, but it's really about us."\nThe Hoosiers are coming off exhibition wins over the University of Indianapolis and Northern Kentucky University by scores of 66-35 and 74-61, respectively. In those two games, the Hoosiers held their opponents to a combined 23.8 field goal percentage. Still, Legette-Jack said she would like to see more.\n"We always can play better defense," she said. "If we can hold teams to zero, that's what we want, and if we can't, we got some work to do. Defensive things that we can control are our intensity and our passion, and we're going to continue to work on those things, and we're going to try to play for March."\nIn each game, freshman guard Jamie Braun has come off the bench and scored double digits for IU. She said she hopes the trend continues in her first regular season game.\n"If my shot falls then I think I'll have a good chance," Braun said. "My teammates have given me the open looks that I need. It just depends if my shot falls."\nThe Hoosiers will follow up the Wake Forest game with a game against either Washington State University or No. 16 Kentucky, depending on the result of their game and the result of the Cougars-Wildcats game. The game will be Sunday at either 11 a.m. or 1 p.m. Legette-Jack said she isn't looking at Sunday's game just yet and hasn't done too much scouting on Wake Forest.\n"I haven't really looked at Wake Forest yet," she said. "We respect all, we fear none. So we're not going to give too much attention to our opponent. If we really work on ourselves and play with the intensity and the passion that we know that we can play with, I think we have a good shot against anyone we play"