The Harvard basketball team opens its final weekend of the season tonight at Brown, knowing that a sweep of the three remaining games could mean a first division finish in the Ivy League for the first time in 22 years.

If Cornell loses both its last games and Harvard beats Yale and Dartmouth after Brown, then Coach Bob Harrison's first season, while by no means as successful as he had hoped, will be more bearable.

In the first half of the Ivy season, Harvard beat Dartmouth in a close one at the IAB, wore down Brown, also at home, and lost to Yale by six, again in the IAB.

Benched Regulars

The first Brown game was a strange one. Trying to shake up his team, which has yet to win a League game, Brown coach Stan Ward, in his year as mentor, benched a number of his regular.

The subs took advantage of an unusually bad Harvard shooting night and were still tied at 54-54, when Paul Waickowski, Dale Dover and Eric Gustavson his for baskets to stake a commanding lead.

Chris Gallagher, now eighth leading scorer in Harvard history and 51 points away from the seventh spot, had 19 in bat first Brown game to lead Harvard.

Among the Bruins who didn't play much that night was a sophomore guard named Billy Kahn who had been leading the team in scoring. Evidently he is now back in Ward's good graces because last week he was again the leading point man, in Brown's narrow loss (58-52) to second place Pennsylvania and somewhat bigger loss to Princeton (74-46).

If Harvard gets by Brown, it will then have to face Yale in New Haven. In the first game between the two teams, Gallagher made a three point play with four and one-half minutes left to tie the game at 68-68, but Harvard could manage only two more points and succumbed, 76-70.

Jim Morgan leads the Elis, both as a scorer and a playmaker. He has been less spectacular than expected, but he's been remarkably consistent, Morgan has a 19.3 average.

John whiston, 6-10 junior, grabs 11.7 rebounds a game and hurt Harvard with his inside moves in the first game.

Thatcher Shellaby, Rob Jackson, Terry Finn, Glenn deChabert and Dan Peters fill out the regular lineup. The last two names are more familiar to LAB devotees for their important roles in the 76-70 game.

Princeton Can Clinch

Princeton can clinch another Ivy League title by beating defending champion Columbia this weekend. If either Penn or Columbia loses one game, and Princeton wins one game of the two each of the three teams will play tonight and Saturday, then the Tigers will have their NCAA berth assured.