There comes a certain point in the season of any team contending for a championship.

The point in the season where every game is a big game.

The point where every weekend is a big weekend.

For Harvard Coach Kathy Delaney Smith's women cagers, that point has arrived.

"To get to this point has taken a lot of hard work, especially for our older players," Delaney Smith said. "This has been an exciting, thrilling season and I hope for their sake that we can continue to play and improve like we have."

The first-place cagers (10-5 overall, 4-1 Ivy) now face their toughest challenge of the season. Winners of three of their last four and six of their last eight games overall, the hoopsters host Yale tonight and Brown tomorrow night in what is undoubtedly the biggest weekend for the Harvard women's basketball program since the squad moved into Briggs Athletic Center five years ago.

That's not to say that the pre-break, weekend sweep of Penn and Princeton wasn't big. It was. It's just that each weekend until the Crimson either clinches or is eliminated gets bigger.

And bigger and bigger.

The Crimson is coming off a 76-67 loss to the University of Massachusetts, but both Delaney Smith and the players were satisfied with the squad's performance.

"I'm happy with the way we played," Co-Captain Trisha Brown said. "I definitely think we can sweep this weekend. We just have to relax and play our game."

Sophomore forward Sharon Hayes still leads the team in scoring (9.9 points per game) but Barbarann Keffer (9.7 p.p.g.), Brown (8.9 p.p.g.), and Anna Collins (8.5 p.p.g.) are not far behind.

Coming off her 24-point performance against UMass and leading the Crimson in both steals and assists, Keffer figures to play a prominent role this weekend.

Sarah Duncan, the freshman forward from Chicago, continues to lead the team in both field goal percentage (48 percent) and free throw percentage (90 percent) and is well ahead of the field in blocked shots with 32.

There is one sour note for the hoopsters as they head into the big weekend. Co-Captain Anne Kelly sprained an ankle in practice yesterday afternoon. The availability of the junior guard will not be known until later today, but Delaney Smith said the outlook is not good.

But Harvard isn't the only school playing host to the Elis and Bruins this weekend, nor is Harvard alone atop the Ivies.