If preseason polls can be trusted, then the women's basketball team should finish second-to-last in the Ivy League this season.
The 2002-03 Ivy League Preseason Womens Basketball Poll, a survey of 16 members of the media that cover Ivy League athletics, unanimously chose Harvard as the League favorite, followed by Penn, Dartmouth, Cornell, Yale, and Columbia. Brown is in eighth place, behind Princeton.
Last year's standings by themselves would lead to the same prediction. The Preseason Poll ranks the teams in the same order in which they finished the 2001-02 season, with the one exception that Cornell and Dartmouth are switched.
Fortunately for the Tigers, however, polls and standings are not always reliable harbingers of what is to come. Anyone who doubts this would have a hard time explaining why last year Princeton, with a 2-25 record the previous season, came out in its second Ivy League game and defeated preseason favorite and eventual league champion Harvard, 59-55. Also contrary to expectations, Princeton split with last-place Brown, but defeated second-place Penn both home and away.
This does not mean that the members of the media who participated in the preseason poll have no idea what they are talking about. Indeed, looking at returning players, it appears that their top three choices — Harvard, Penn, and Dartmouth — should have especially strong teams this year.
Harvard returns both last season's Ivy League Player and Rookie of the Year — a dynamic duo consisting of sophomore Hana Peljto and Reka Cserny that combined for more than half of the Crimson's points - as well as three of the League's top 10 rebounders. Add to the mix point guard Beverly Moore, a transfer student from Louisiana Tech, and the Crimson should have the tools in place for another winning season.
The Penn Quakers return unanimous first-team All-Ivy honoree Jewel Clark, a triple-threat player who led her team last year in scoring (6.3 points per game) and in rebounding (9.8 per game), while finishing second on the team with 67 assists. Furthermore, the Quakers enter the 2002-03 season with few question marks, losing just one senior to graduation.
Two-time first-team All-Ivy Katharine Hanks returns to the Dartmouth squad for her final season. Hanks begins the season fifth on the school's scoring list with 1,359 points, after leading the League in scoring at 20.7 points per game. She is also the third player in Quaker history to record 1,000 points, 500 rebounds, and 100 blocks. In addition, the Big Green welcomes back 12 letterwinners and all five starters from last season.
Although there are definite reasons to expect that these three teams will provide Princeton with its biggest challenges this season, the remaining four Ivy League teams - Cornell, Yale, Columbia, and Brown - will not be pushovers.
The main strength of Cornell, Yale, and Columbia will be experience. All teams return a solid core of players from last season.
Brown, on the other hand, is armed with one of the League's top recruiting classes. In addition, the team returns junior forward Nyema Mitchell, whose 2.3 blocks per game average was the highest in the Ivy League and within the nation's Top 20. The Bears, determined to get out of the Ivy League basement this season, cannot be overlooked-especially since they grabbed a game from Princeton last year.
The unexpected game-by-game results of last season reveal that women's Ivy League basketball suffers from a problem of inconsistency. Making accurate predictions as to who will win the title is difficult because no team has been consistently dominant or consistently submissive within a single season.
Aware of this, Princeton head coach Richard Barron expressed that his team has nothing to be afraid of. "Harvard is the most talented team," he said, "but it is not invincible. The key to winning the league will be consistency from one game to the next."
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