This Time for Real

When Harvard women's basketball Coach Kathy Delaney Smith heard the news, she went nuts, bananas, bonkers.

"What? Are you sure?" she asked frantically.

Then the veteran coach simply screamed.

But Delaney Smith quickly composed herself. She wasn't about to let the emotion of the situation go to her head. She wanted confirmation.

Delaney Smith asked someone to make sure it was true that Dartmouth actually lost to Princeton. She wanted to know if her squad was really back in first place.

Harvard played one of its worst games of the season the night before and was outclassed by Princeton. The display was a nightmare of inconsistency and missed opportunities. For most of the contest, the Crimson was outplayed and outmuscled, rarely managing to put a string of baskets and good defensive plays together.

Just minutes after that 21-point loss, Smith and assistant coaches Beth Wheatley Doran and Missy Park waited in cavernous Jadwin Gym for word about the Dartmouth game. Unfortunately, the Big Green demolished Penn, taking over first place in the Ivies.

Harvard had been in the driver's seat, but it let the Ivy crown slip away--at least for one night. The team would have to be content with second place, sitting a single but distant game behind the Big Green with just two league contests remaining.

Few besides Delaney Smith thought that Dartmouth would lose another game. Smith had predicted that the Ivy champion would have three or four losses, but at this point in the season it didn't look good--the Big Green had an 8-2 record, with only Cornell and Princeton to play.

It was now a day later and Harvard had just dispensed with Penn, 80-65. Usually after a victory, the team returns to its locker room to create utter mayhem, banging on lockers and letting out blood-curdling screams.

But for the first 10 minutes after the win this night, the cagers were relatively subdued, and few unusual sounds echoed in the near-empty Palestra.

The celebration didn't begin until Delaney Smith and the cagers received the news that Dartmouth had lost to Princeton, 69-67, just minutes after her team's victory.

As the news slowly disseminated to the players, the realization that with just one more Ivy victory they would be league champs left some of those usually not-so-shy speechless.

Freshman Sarah Duncan could only exclaim "What?" as she put on the most quizzical look she could find.

It was the second time in two weeks that Harvard had returned to the top of the Ivy League because of a Dartmouth loss. After the Crimson lost to the Big Green two weeks ago in Hanover, N.H., to fall a game behind, Dartmouth was upset by Cornell just four days later, giving Harvard new life.

Now with just one game remaining, the team is looking to make sure its holds onto the title by beating Cornell Saturday.

"We're too close now to let it slip away again," said Co-Captain Trisha Brown.