Hoosiers look to bounce back against in-state rival IPFW

In wake of an 82-47 loss at Bowling Green State University Wednesday night, the IU women's basketball team will complete its three-game road trip Sunday against IU-Purdue Fort Wayne.\nThe Hoosier defense struggled all night against Bowling Green State, allowing the Falcons to sink nine 3-pointers.\nIf the Hoosiers want to leave Fort Wayne with a win, they will have to get back to playing the stifling defense they displayed in six of their first eight games, in which IU held opponents to less than 40 percent shooting from the field.\n"It's an amoeba defense," IU coach Felisha Legette-Jack said of her team earlier in the season. "It kind of matches up to the teams we play, so it's hard to scout it. The type of team that we want to have is the team that you can't look at the stats and see who really hurts you. You have to really watch us run and really concentrate on the film."\nBut Legette-Jack's "amoeba defense" is small compared with IPFW's.\nWith the exception of 6-foot-7 IU center Sarah McKay, the Hoosiers are undersized at most positions against the Mastodons. Though an undersized team, IU hopes that what it lacks in size, it will make up in tenacity and effort on the court.\n"The passion, desire, loose balls, chipping the tooth on the floor because you're going after something that's impossible but you go get it any way -- those are the statistics that we have to keep for our team," Legette-Jack said. "Those guys really take it serious."\nSophomore forward Whitney Thomas said early in the season that the Hoosiers can make up for their small size if they play big and aggressively.\nJunior guard Nikki Smith said IU needs to play quick and smart on both sides of the ball. Boxing-out defenders is an important facet of the game the Hoosiers must focus on, she said.\n"We have to make sure we box out," Smith said earlier in the season. "We're never going to out-jump or out-power people. We have to out-think them and play our strengths. I think playing hard and wanting it more than the other team -- that's going to overshadow the tall and huge teams that we have to go up against."\nSome Hoosiers believe that getting back to competing as a team and playing "Indiana basketball" can make the Bowling Green State loss seem like a small hiccup on the way to a successful season.\n"You can look at the cup half empty, but we choose to make it seem like it's half full," Legette-Jack said. "We may not have size, but we have a lot of heart and desire"