Hoosiers return to action

It's been about 10 weeks since the IU women's tennis team's last event. With Sunday marking the beginning of the team's dual-match portion of the season, the Hoosiers will be as concerned with playing up to their capabilities as they will be about their two opponents on Sunday, Western Michigan and Miami of Ohio.\nBecause of new NCAA regulations limiting practice time the week before finals and during winter break, coach Lin Loring said he hadn't seen much of his team until this week.\nThe lack of organized practice didn't prevent the coaching staff from trying to make the most out of the break. Loring said each player was given a few specific areas of their game to improve on before returning to action this Sunday. Without guidance, however, only certain amounts of improvement can be expected, Loring said.\n"It's kind of tough without coaching to see a lot of the improvement," Loring said.\nAfter the long layoff, Loring said that he was more concerned with having every player performing at the same level they exhibited in November than being able to note improvement.\nSophomore Alba Berdala said the Hoosiers have notes and scouting reports on each team on their schedule. Typically, she said, a significant amount of time in practice is spent preparing for the week's opponents using these notes, but Loring said that's not the team's top priority this week.\n"In this case, we're a little more worried about us than our opponent," Loring said. He added that it would not be until the team's practices on Friday and Saturday that time would be spent preparing specifically for Western Michigan and Miami.\nOne area the Hoosiers have been working to improve is in doubles. Loring said in December that doubles would be an area of focus during the break because this is the first season in which IU hasn't had a doubles team ranked either nationally or regionally.