Let the season begin. Let there be no excuses.

The Harvard women's basketball team opened its season at the four-team Rice Classic in Houston, Texas last weekend. After dropping the first game to Tulane, 72-56, the Crimson rebounded to take University of Texas El Paso, 73-54.

But that's not the full story. For the women cagers, the tournament marks the end of a pre-season full of questions, and the start of a season made of answers not excuses.

The sophomore trio of Beth Wambach, Jen Mazanec and Dina Hadrick responded to the loss of super scoring starters Sharon Hayes and Barbarann Keffer, who graduated last spring. They combined to score 23 points against Tulane and 32 off El Paso. Co-Captain Beth Chandler led all Crimson scorers with 14 points in the first game, followed by Mazanec with 10. Wambach's 15 points dominated El Paso.

The tournament also provided a showcase for the talents of senior forward Sarah Duncan. Showing why she is one of the Crimson's best players, Duncan, a Crimson co-captain, took command of the boards. She had nine rebounds against Tulane and blocked 11 shots in the two games. Duncan was selected to the all-tournament team.

With these positive individual performances, the team should be 2-0. Right?

"We should have won [versus Tulane]," Hadrick said. "The effort was there...we just weren't executing."

The cagers refuse to give Tulane any credit. They could have had control of the game. They just let it slip away.

"We were better," Chandler said, "but we made more errors faster."

Courageous

Harvard will admit that Tulane did an excellent job capitalizing on its mistakes, but the focus will stay on the Crimson.

"We need to run the offences better," Chandler said. "We have the potential to be a great team...the losses shouldn't affect us.

When employed, Harvard's new motion offense was successful.

"When we ran it, it worked well," Chandler said.

The Crimson next sees action tomorrow at 5 p.m. against Smith.