An Ivy Tournament Preview: The Year in Review

As the post-season Ivy League Women's Basketball Tournament gets underway this evening (7:30 p.m., Briggs Athletic Center), we take a look back at some of the memorable highlights of the season which brought Harvard a share of its first Ivy basketball title in 84 years (12 years of women's play). Here is the Crimson's 1985-'86 year in review.

August 19-September 1: Several members of the '84-'85 squad travel to Holland to play exhibition games with the top four-ranked club teams in the country, many of whose players competed on the Dutch state's national team. The trip proves extremely valuable for a young Crimson squad looking to gain experience working together as a unit.

The Pre-Season: Missy Park, a 1985 graduate of Yale, joins Kathy Delaney Smith's coaching staff and Beth Wheatly Doran returns for her fifth year as an assistant. Delaney Smith stresses that her team is still young but that it is capable of posting a better than .500 record for the first time this decade.

The fourth-year coach predicts that because of league parity, this year's Ivy champ will have at least three losses. Harvard and Dartmouth will eventually wind up their campaigns tied for first at 9-3.

November 23: On the day of The Game, the Crimson travels to the University of Hartford and knocks off the Lady Hawks, 45-43, in the cagers' season opener. Harvard shows off its depth--which will later play a major factor in the squad's stretch drive--right from day one, as nine different players score.

The victory marks the first Harvard road win in over two years and gives the hoopsters--losers of 10 games decided by 10 points or less last year--confidence that they can win the close ones.

November 30: Sharon Hayes, last year's leading scorer for the Crimson, goes 8-for-11 from the floor as the cagers celebrate Thanksgiving by defeating defending Ivy co-champion Brown, on the road, 71-66. It's the first Ivy road win since Delaney Smith assumed control of the program in 1982.

December 1: Harvard suffers an apparent let-down after the big win at Brown and is crushed by Yale in New Haven, 64-48. Following a month of non-league play, the Crimson will comeback to win its next five Ivy contests in a row. No Harvard women's basketball team had ever before captured more than three league games in a whole season.

December 6 and 7: After shooting 29 percent from the floor in losing a 40-point mid-week contest at national powerhouse Boston College, the Crimson returns home to Briggs to host the fifth annual Harvard Invitational.

All signs point towards the hoopsters' capturing the event for the second consecutive year when they outclass Long Island University, 86-67, in the opening round Friday night, but they run into a tough Lehigh squad the following night and fall in the finals, 77-58.

Hayes, who registers 30 points in the two-game tourney, and freshman Sarah Duncan, who embarks on a string of 30 consecutive free throws over the weekend, are both named to the All-Tournament team.

January 4: Despite being out-rebounded 48-22, Harvard beats the "team to beat," pulling out a three-point win over Dartmouth. Duncan records five blocked-shots and the Crimson, averaging 25 turnovers per game, turns the ball over only 10 times.

January 10 and 11: Beth Chandler, returning from a pre-season knee injury, scores 30 points over the weekend--en route to being named Ivy Player of the Week--as the cagers complete their first-ever weekend sweep over Ivy competition.

By demolishing Penn, 68-52, Friday night, the Crimson snaps a six-game/three-year losing streak against the Quakers and assumes first place in the Ivies. And with its eight-point victory over Princeton Saturday night, the squad has already knocked off both defending Ivy co-champions of '84-'85 with more than half the league schedule remaining.