Sure, there are times when Haylie Linn misses home, just like any college freshman does.

There also are times when she calls her family back in Madison and hears about the piles and piles of snow that have been dumped on the area.

Those moments make Linn, a freshman guard on the Indiana women's basketball team, appreciate life in Bloomington, Ind., even more.

"I'm having a good time with basketball and school's going well," the former Madison Edgewood athlete said. "I really like it here. And the way I hear it, our weather is about a thousand times better. ... We don't have any snow."

Linn will get a good look at the snow and icy streets of her hometown tonight as the Hoosiers arrive in Madison in advance of Wednesday's Big Ten Conference game against the University of Wisconsin.

Linn, who hasn't been home since a three-day visit for Christmas, said she's expecting to have more than 50 family members and friends in the crowd at the Kohl Center, a contingent that will include some of her former Crusaders teammates.

And she can only hope to replicate what she did against the Badgers on Jan. 31 in Bloomington, when she came off the bench to help fuel a fast start by the Hoosiers in an 86-62 blowout win. Linn put together one of her best collegiate performances, hitting four 3-pointers on her way to 15 points, her second-best total of the season.

"Haylie had a great game against us," UW coach Lisa Stone said. "She got on fire."

It hasn't all gone that way, though. The 5-foot-11 Linn, who is averaging 3.7 points in 11.7 minutes per game, has endured plenty of nights spent mostly on the bench, coming in for a few late minutes.

She had a tough start to the season, making just one of the 13 shots she took — and going 1-for-10 from 3-point range — in Indiana's two exhibition games. Linn didn't play in two of the Hoosiers' first three regular-season games, and in the one she did — a 74-56 win over Arkansas-Pine Bluff — she shot 1-for-7 from the field in 25 minutes.

But there have been games where Linn has shown what she's capable of — take Indiana's 85-78 loss to Florida State Nov. 30, when she hit all five 3-pointers she took and finished with a season-high 16 points in 26 minutes off the bench.

She's earned seven starts in the Hoosiers' ever-changing rotation — coach Felisha Legette-Jack has used six starting lineups so far — and has recovered from her shaky shooting start to rank second on the team in 3-point shooting percentage at 37.5 And if you take out her 1-for-7 start to the season from 3-point range, Linn's connecting at a 40.8 percent clip.

"She's working hard," Legette-Jack said. "She's here with five other freshmen, and so together they're going through their struggles and laughing and having a good time, but also going through the struggles together.

"And so, any given day, anybody's number can be called, including Haylie's, and so she's open to that and she has really done a good job of stepping up when her number is called."

Linn would love to get another opportunity Wednesday in a game that should prove key to each team's conference finish.

Indiana (15-11 overall, 8-6 Big Ten) is looking to pull even with fourth-place Minnesota, while the Badgers (13-11, 6-8) are trying to get closer to a top-half finish.

"I think I'm approaching the actual game the same as I would any other Big Ten game," Linn said, "but at the same time I'm really excited to have so many friends and family there."