The Harvard men's basketball team has spent decades on the low end of one of the most dominated leagues in the history of college athletics. At 7:30 p.m. tonight, the Crimson could start to turn things around.

The Crimson travels to Dartmouth today for its 1984-85 Ivy League opener, which might just signal the start of Harvard's finest season ever.

And at the same time, it might just signal the end of what in the last 25 years has become the most monopolized league in collegiate athletic history.

In the last quarter century. Penn & Princeton have wrapped up Ivy League title as often as Johnson & Johnson have wrapped up boo boos.

Since 1960, only Yale in 1962 and Columbia in 1961 have broken the Penn Princeton stranglehold on the Ivy men's basketball trophy.

This year, though, things could be different.

For starters, Penn will have trouble without a sound forward, and Princeton will have trouble without a sound player.

Meanwhile, Harvard will field its soundest team in years and there's the makin' of a whole lot of shakin' from the fellows in Briggs Athletic Center.

"We have the ability to do a lot of things," says Harvard Coach Frank McLaughlin. "Including winning the Ivy title."

The same thing was considered possible a year ago, but Harvard one of only two teams in the 83 year history of Ivy hoop never to win a league crown--finished 9.5 and in second place.

This year, the hopes are even higher. That's because the Crimson lost to graduation an average of just 12 points per game, while picking up a slew of freshmen many consider the finest in years.

"We should be better." McLaughlin says emphatically. "The expectations are certainly higher."

The Crimson has yet to look like a championship team, however. For while it's off to its best start in years (holding a 3-0 overall record). Harvard has squandered huge first-half leads in each of its three games this winter, only to scramble for unimpressive victories over supposedly inferior opponents.

"We've played well, but not terribly consistently," says McLaughlin. "Based on our performance thus far, we're not playing like a league contender."

"If you put all our first halves together, we look like a real good team," says last year's Ivy League Player of the Year Joe Carrabino. "But if you take our second halves, then we don't look very good."