W. Hoops Hope to Recover Diginity

However Mike Tyson felt as his face hit the canvas against Buster Douglas, however the 1954 Yankees felt once the Indians clinched the American League title, however Napoleon surely felt after failing to take Moscow, the members of the Harvard women's basketball team must have felt last Saturday night.

On that evening in Princeton, NJ, the Princeton Tigers beat the Crimson, 56-53, shattering Harvard's 32-game Ivy League winning streak. It has been exactly 25 months since the Crimson (16-3, 6-1 Ivy) last entered an Ivy League contest having lost its last one, so when Harvard storms into New York this weekend to face Cornell (5-15, 2-6) tonight and Columbia (4-16, 0-8) tomorrow, it will be an unfamiliar situation for most of the players.

"You can definitely tell in practice that something is different," said co-captain Megan Basil. "This was one of the best weeks of practice we've had all year. It almost feels like we have something to prove, both to others and to ourselves."

Indeed the rules of the game in the Ivy League have changed. No longer is Harvard the unbeatable basketball monolith, the lone Goliath to seven Ancient Eight Davids.

This weekend not only showed the chinks the Crimson's armor but it also kept the door to the Ivy League title open to teams like Penn and Princeton--each of whom sits a game behind Harvard at 5-2. With home rematches against both opponents remaining, as well as road games against Dartmouth--which almost pulled off an upset win against Harvard in January--and Brown--which took the Crimson to overtime two weekends ago--a third straight Ivy title is by no means a given.

"The Ivy race has become a little more interesting--just a little," said co-captain Allison Feaster, who scored 34 of the team's 53 points against the Tigers. "As our coach [Kathy Delaney-Smith] told us, we're pretty spoiled since we haven't really had to work for an Ivy title."

"I think we're focusing more on the Ivy race, and before the loss we were thinking about the NCAA tournament," Basil said. "Before we just sort of took it for granted that we were going to win the title. Now we'll be more focused."

It does not hurt the Crimson's cause to face opponents struggling as mightily as the Big Red and the Lions. Harvard blew out both teams at Lavietes Pavilion in January, besting Cornell, 97-60, one night after topping Columbia, 86-57.

In fact, all three teams enter the weekend on losing skids. While the Crimson's is just a modest one--it's been four seasons since Harvard has had back-to-back Ivy losses--the Big Red slide into tonight's game having dropped four straight, and the Lions' last win came 10 games ago.

But if Harvard's players learned nothing else from this weekend, it is to take nothing for granted.

"The loss kind of kicked us in the butt and made us see things we wouldn't have seen otherwise," said freshman point guard Lisa Kowal. "It showed us our weaknesses and what we have to work on."

One of the things this team needs to work on is defensive consistency. Penn scored 45 points against Harvard in the first half last Friday as the Crimson let a 27 point lead midway through the half dwindle to six at the break.

"Our defense looked sloppy here and there [last weekend]," Kowal said. "We weren't boxing out all the time. We were doing things well, just not really well all the time."

In the last meeting between Harvard and Cornell, the Crimson held just a four-point lead at halftime before taking control of the game in the second frame.

"[Cornell] played us close for the first half, but we forced a lot of turnovers in the second half," Feaster said. "We need to play team defense. We just have to remember what we did last time and just play like that the whole game."

The imbalance in the team's play has been not just from half to half, but among the players themselves as well.

While Feaster's supporting cast stepped up with authority against the Quakers, led by junior guard Suzie Miller's career-high 33 points, the distribution of scoring against the Tigers raised further concerns about the extent to which the Crimson minus Feaster is pulling its weight.

Harvard has already shown it can win. It must now play as a team, and re-prove that it cannot lose.

"We're really excited about these games," Feaster said. "[Cornell and Columbia] will be on their homecourt, so I expect some added intensity, but we have a chance to really make a statement."

There are many ways to respond to a setback. While Napoleon's loss may have been the beginning of the end for him, and while Tyson went on to bite Evander Holyfield's ear off--among other inauspicious acts--the Yankees won the next two American League pennants.

Harvard's fate has yet to be determined. Step one is this weekend in the Big Apple.