W. basketball continues Ivy League play after match-up with Lafayette

Before the second semester begins in early February, the women's basketball team will have three more entries in its record book. First the Tigers (5-9 overall, 1-0 Ivy League) will end their non-league play season with a match-up against LaFayette, followed by their second and third Ivy League games against Harvard and Dartmouth.

The Leopards had a murky preseason, managing only one win out of 11 games. Their struggle probably has a lot to with the fact that injuries have taken three players out for the rest of the year, including guard Lindsay Myers who played the most minutes and finished third on the team in scoring and rebounding last season. Lafayette kicked off its Patriot League schedule with a nine-point victory over Colgate in the conference opener. But the team played especially well that night — setting a season-record for points scored with 89 — and Princeton would be best off thinking of the Lafayette game as a warm up, to polish itself up before the more formidable Harvard and Dartmouth games to follow.

The two Ivy opponents Princeton will face by the time classes start up again are the firstand last-ranked teams in the league. To reach those rankings this early in the season, the two teams have only played each other. Harvard defeated Dartmouth twice consecutively, to reach its top 2-0 standing, obviously leaving the Big Green in the basement with two early losses.

It is not surprising that the Crimson are leading the league right now, since they took the Ivy title last season. But if last season provides any indication of how this year will turn out, it is promising for the Tigers that they beat Harvard, 59-50, early in 2002.

Harvard returns both last season's Ivy League Player and Rookie of the Year — a dynamic duo consisting of 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-ten rebounders. Add to the mix point guard Beverly Moore, who transferred to Harvard after playing two seasons with Louisiana Tech, which went all the way to the East Regionals of the NCAA tournament last year. She was out due to the NCAA transfer rule when the Tigers defeated Harvard, and she will not be an easy player to shut down.

Harvard, currently 10-4 overall, lost its first game to Vanderbilt by forty points in the championship game of the First Tennessee Tournament, then won three in a row. Its other three losses came against Minnesota, Boston College and Rutgers.

Dartmouth, at 5-7 overall, started off the season roughly with three consecutive losses in the New Mexico Tournament. It redeemed itself the following week at its own tournament in Hanover, making it all the way to the Championship game against Delaware, losing 61-48.

Dartmouth's top scorer is Katherine Hanks, who averages 20.8 points per game. While the Tigers will have to contain her, Harvard showed that this can be done — the Crimson kept her from scoring until only thirteen minutes remained in the game. Either tough man-to-man or a seamless zone defense will be the key to shutting her down, which the Tigers proved they can do exceedingly well in their Ivy opener last Saturday when they held Penn's shooters to a paltry 26 percent in the first half.

The Tigers have been turning heads this season, not so much for the number of wins but for the strength of their opponents. Their 9-5 record conceals the fact that they have seen the likes of Stanford, Baylor, and Denver.

At the beginning of the season, head coach Richard Barron had intentionally added these difficult match-ups to prepare his team for the Ivy League — when the record really matters. More than hoping to win as many games as possible in the pre-season, Barron wanted to focus on cleansing the Tiger's fundamentals and developing consistency.