Hoosiers ready for 1st homestand of season

After spending the first month of the season on the road, the IU softball team will finally get a chance to play in front of its home crowd when it hosts the IU Classic this weekend. \nJoining the Hoosiers in the tournament are Buffalo, Illinois-Chicago and Eastern Michigan.\n“It always feels the best defending home, because we always say we don’t lose at home, and you have the music to pump you up and your own fans, so it’s exciting,” junior Jennilee Huddleston said.\nAlthough any team would prefer playing at home, the Hoosiers have fared well away from Bloomington. They enjoyed a nine-game winning streak during spring break and enter the IU Classic having won 10 of their last 12. The Hoosiers now have a chance to extend the streak and protect home turf at the same time.\n“Protecting home is taking pride in your school and taking pride in the program,” Huddleston said. “(It’s) showing everybody what you can do and saying we’re going to stop you no matter what.”\nThe offense came alive for the Hoosiers during their hot streak as they eclipsed the 10-run mark three times, all of which ended early due to the mercy rule. They mixed in good offense with good defense, scoring more than six runs per game while allowing fewer than two runs per game during their nine-game winning streak. However, it was the pitching that caught the eye of IU coach Stacey Phillips.\n“I’m impressed with our offense but I’m most impressed with our pitching right now, of (sophomore) Monica Wright especially,” Phillips said. “She’s the one that stepped up in a lot of the ballgames that have given us the opportunity to tag on a few runs in one inning. She does a great job on the mound and I’m really impressed and proud of how she’s taken games really into her own hands a lot of the time.”\nThe Hoosiers have some familiarity with their opponents in the IU Classic having faced two of the participants already this season. \nIU squared off against the Illinois-Chicago two weeks ago and lost to the Flames 2-0. \n“We’ve got to stick to our attack mentality,” Phillips said. “We had kind of drifted away from that in that game, for whatever reason. We just have to clear our heads and go out there and just attack the way we have and the way we’ve done as of late, especially.”\nThe Hoosiers exploded March 16 against Buffalo for 10 runs on 15 hits. Buffalo enters the IU Classic with a 2-20 record.\n“I think we go into it like any other game,” junior outfielder Julia Hamilton said. “You can’t underestimate them no matter what happened in the previous game. You have to go into it with the mentality that we play Indiana softball and not to anybody else’s level.”\nThe Hoosiers’ recent success has them hungry for more. \n“The more you as a player and as a coach say, ‘I want, I want, I want,’ and the harder you work to go get it, the better it feels when you get it and the better it tastes,” Phillips said. “In a sense too, we’ve won a couple tournaments in the last week and a half, and we want to have that again.”