At the beginning of the season, not many people expected big things from the Illinois women's soccer team. After a 10-11-1 record in 2002, all fans could have hoped for was improvement.

If someone would have said the Illini would break numerous team records, win the Big Ten tournament and host the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament, anyone would have told them to keep dreaming.

The dream continues tonight at 7:30 p.m. as No. 9 Illini host the Western Michigan Broncos in the first round of the NCAA Women's Soccer College Cup.

Illinois head coach Janet Rayfield said that although it is an unbelievable experience qualifying for the tournament, their goal now is to make some noise.

"We consider it an honor to be here; it was one of our goals to get here, but it's also one of our goals to see how far into this tournament we can go," Rayfield said.

Western Michigan will be making their first appearance in the NCAA tournament. They received a bid by virtue of their first place finish in the Mid-American Conference tournament. While the Broncos are undefeated on their home field, they have struggled on the road, going 3-7-1, giving Illinois a tremendous advantage — especially with the Illini's 8-2-2 record at home this season.

"This team is pretty confident and comfortable anywhere," Rayfield said. "But there's something about this place where we can get through our routine. This team seems to have a few rituals that they enjoy doing and make it fun for them and we can do all those things when we're here at home."

With such a short time to prepare for an unfamiliar opponent, Rayfield has taken a different approach to the game but is still relying on her team playing the way they can.

"It's very similar to the beginning of the year when you don't know a lot about any team you get ready to play because neither team has played many games," Rayfield said. "So we'll approach it like that. Here's what we know about them, but here's what we know about ourselves."

Despite taking a different approach due to the opponent, Rayfield insists that her team will do the same things they've done all year even though it is in the tournament.

"We're going to prepare in the same way, we're going to go about it in the same way, we're going to defend with every ounce of energy we have," Rayfield said. "We're going to play the best soccer we can play."

Senior midfielder Jennifer Smith says this is just the way the seniors wanted to end their career.

"We were there my freshman and sophomore years and it was sad missing last year," Smith said. "But coming back and being able to do this our senior year is amazing."

As the Illini prepare to take on Western Michigan as a team, more team members have been handed individual awards. Junior forward Tara Hurless, junior goalkeeper Leisha Alcia and senior defender Meghan Kolze were named First Team All-Big Ten, freshman Jessica Bayne was named to the Big Ten All-Freshman Team and sophomore defender Christen Karniski was named to the CoSIDA Academic All-District V Soccer Team. Kolze and junior midfielder Christine Sinak were named to the All-Academic second team.

The winner of the Illini/WMU game will play the winner of the DePaul/Purdue game, which takes place today at 4 p.m. The winners of the games play Sunday at 2 p.m. at Illinois Soccer Stadium.