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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

Basketball in March?

Don't fret Hoosier faithful -- odds are we'll see the cream and crimson compete in the NCAA Tournament next month.\nNow before you reel off another e-mail to the Indiana Daily Student complaining about our overly optimistic stance on the basketball team, let me specify something for you.\nI'm talking about the women's team.\nStarting the Big Ten season with a pedestrian 4-3 mark, the Hoosiers found themselves smack dab in the middle of the Big Ten standings heading into a Jan. 26 matchup with Illinois.\n"A win tomorrow would separate us from the pack because there are about three or four teams that are dead center right now," IU coach Sharon Versyp told the IDS before the game. "We're just preparing to be the best that we can for the postseason tournament. We're just trying to set a precedent for a winning attitude."\nAnd that they did.\nThe Hoosiers have won six of their last eight, highlighted by an enormous overtime victory against No. 10 Purdue Sunday in West Lafayette.\nBecause of its recent winning ways, the women's basketball team is currently a No. 12 seed in the San Antonio bracket of the NCAA Tournament, according to ESPN's "Women's Bracketology," compiled by Charlie Creme.\nBut like a frat boy thinking he's gonna score just because he bought a cute girl a drink, this isn't a done deal just yet. Creme has five Big Ten teams cutting a rug at the Big Dance, with the Hoosiers occupying the fifth and final spot. The women's squad has two tough road tests this week starting Thursday when it travels to Minneapolis to take on the No. 16 Minnesota Golden Gophers. Sunday, the women head to Iowa to face a Hawkeye squad that currently sits one game behind the Hoosiers in the Big Ten standings. Its overall record (15-10) is equivalent to IU's.\nCreme also knocked the Hawkeyes out of his NCAA Tournament projections this week in favor of the Hoosiers -- an extra incentive for Iowa to win the game.\nNow for a bit of history.\nThe women's team has only made the NCAA tourney four times in the last 23 seasons, with its last appearance coming during the 2001-2002 campaign -- resulting in a first-round loss to Texas Christian University.\nIn fact, the last time the Hoosiers won a game in the tourney occurred during the 1982-83 season in a first-round victory over Kentucky.\nThat's not much tradition or history to build on. But as we've learned from the men's team the past two years, history doesn't always repeat itself.

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