The Big Green has finished last in the league four of the past five years and has not had a winning season since the 1971-72 campaign.

In the years that both Harvard and Dartmouth were bad (which were not infrequent), the rest of the league could look forward to its "Harvard-Dartmouth" trips as a nice vacation and two easy wins.

In the past few years, with the Crimson a modest force in the league and the Big Green still a doormat, teams viewed the "H-D" weekend as a semi-tough proposition: an easy win in Hanover, N.H. followed by a real contest in Cambridge.

But suddenly this year, Dartmouth has started winning, beating Yale on the road, coming within two points of league-leader Brown on the road, and sweeping Columbia and Cornell at home last weekend.

There are seven teams still in the Ivy race as of this weekend, seven teams within two-and-a-half games of the top.

For Dartmouth, Penn, and Princeton, this is a key Ivy weekend: any team that can engineer a sweep will move to the top of the pack; any team that is swept can start looking towards next season.

The Crimson cagers, who are involved in this weekend's festivities but are at the same time very distant from them, will appreciate the company.