This piece was originally intended to mark the one-week anniversary of the crushing defeat suffered by the Harvard women's basketball team last Tuesday night at Dartmouth.

It was originally intended to lament how Harvard could win the rest of its Ivy matchups--and finish with an all-time team record 10-2 league mark--yet still place second in the Ancient Eight.

It was originally intended to admire the cagers' ability to put that loss aside, travel to Ithaca, N.Y., and dominate Cornell in a building in which Harvard hadn't won a game in four years.

But no--that wild, wacky world of sports had to do its thing again.

First David beat Goliath. Then the tortoise beat the hare. And Sunday, the Big Red lady hoopsters of Cornell knocked off the Big Green of Dartmouth, 58-57.

So much for the lament.

Whether it was a belated Christmas gift (notice the witty use of Red and Green color imagery) or an early Valentine's Day present is irrelevant. The fact is that Cornell breathed new life into Harvard's hopes of a first-ever Ivy League crown.

The victory of a small Hawaiian school named Chaminade over a previously undefeated and picked-to-win-the-national championship University of Virginia squad a few years back has become somewhat of an annoying cliche, but that's all I could keep thinking about when I got the news.

There's no complicated procedure vis-a-vis the kind of NFL playoff possibilities that The USA Today spends pages examining. It's plain and simple: Harvard wins its three remaining league contests (beginning this coming weekend at Penn and Princeton and concluding the following Friday night at home against Cornell) and Harvard wins the Ivy League championship.

Should Dartmouth do the same, the two squads would share the league title (which would mean four different Ivy winners in two years, since Princeton and Brown tied for the Ancient Eight crown last season).

Both the Crimson and Big Green have identical Ivy schedules remaining. Both will be unhappy--to say the least--with anything but a sweep in their respective "southern" swings to Penn and Princeton this weekend.

It's no secret around Briggs Cage these days that Harvard wants Dartmouth. That opportunity for revenge may yet come about before the 1985-'86 season draws to a close; the two clubs are likely to meet in a meaningless (as far as declaring the official league champ goes) post-season Ivy Tournament in three weeks time.

And in the meantime, Cornell has given Harvard a shot at The Real Thing.