Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Support the IDS in College Media Madness! Donate here March 24 - April 8.
Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

sports women's basketball

Hoosiers’ opening season on road against Sugar Bears

The IU women’s basketball team has never lost in a regular season opener in the past five years IU Coach Felisha Legette-Jack has been in charge. The Hoosiers look to extend that streak to six as the weekend begins.

IU will travel to Conway, Ark., to face Central Arkansas at 8 p.m. Friday to officially begin the 2011-12 season. The matchup will be the first ever meeting between the two schools.

The Sugar Bears are relatively new to Division I play. They joined the same year Legette-Jack became head coach at IU, the 2006-07 season. The Sugar Bears went 21-11 overall and 11-5 in the Southland Conference. They lost in their conference championship game, leaving them one victory away from clinching an NCAA tournament berth.

Central Arkansas returns all five starters and 10 players overall from last year’s roster, including junior forward Megan Herbert, who averaged 17.2 points and 10.6 rebounds per game last season while shooting a whopping 56.7 percent from the field. She has been awarded with a Southland preseason First-Team All-Conference selection for this season.

The Hoosiers won their two exhibition games against St. Ambrose and Indianapolis by a combined 56 points, but those don’t count as official wins or losses.
Despite forcing 60 total turnovers, Legette-Jack wants her squad’s defense to improve for Friday’s matchup.

“Our transition defense and boxing out has to get better,” she said. “They’re a scrappy team. They run the floor very, very hard, and we’ve got to match their intensity and surpass it.”

Legette-Jack hinted that the starters for Friday’s game should be sophomore guard Andrea Newbauer, junior guard Jasmine McGhee and junior forward Linda Rubene, and senior forwards Danilsa Andujar and Georgie Jones.

“I think we’ve pretty much got our lineup right now,” she said. “We’re going to go with our senior leading group and match their senior leading group.”

Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe