Ivy League women's tennis this season was about as predictable as the attendance at a U.C.-sponsored music event.

And that meant trouble for the Crimson.

The squad came into the season as the early favorite to take the league. It had lost no returning players from the year before, and it was gaining some of the top talent seen in Cambridge since the Erica DeLone days.

"We undoubtedly came into this season pumped up," junior number one singles player Jill Brenner said earlier in the season. "I was really impressed from the start with how developed some of the players are. We set our goals high."

Of course, Brenner was no slouch herself. The junior transferred from the University of Florida this season where she had helped the Gators cruise to a national championship last season. At one point, she was rated as high as seventh in the country.

In addition to Brenner,the squad was acquiring the talents of freshman Gina Majmudar, a former face in Sports Illustrated "Faces in the Crowd" due to her impressive high school record, and freshman Maryla Madura, a prep Phenom from the Tennis State, Florida.

Illustrating just how much talent the team added to its line-up this season, last year's number-one singles player, talented sophomore Kate Roiter, dropped to the number-four position this year.

Given those additions, it is not hard to understand why the team began this year set on nothing less than an Ivy League title.

"Our goal was definitely to win the league," Brenner says. "We wanted to win the league win the year, and then progress even farther next year."

Those plans seemed more than within reach at the outset of the year. In the fall, the team won fourstraight matches against East Coast foes.

It beat Boston University, 5-4; Boston College, 9-0; Richmond, 5-1; and then George Washington, 5-3. It dropped its final fall match to a tough Virginia team, 5-0, but that could hardly dampen the team's irrepressible optimism.

"We were really psyched after the fall," Majmudar says. "We had cruised for the most part."

That cruising continued into the first part of the spring season. The team woke from the long winter beat BU, 5-4 on March 16. And then, on a trip to California, it continued its winning ways, dismantling Cast State-Northridge, 9-0, and Colorado, 5-4.

With a 7-1 record, the team was undoubtedly riding high. But suddenly, in the middle of the trip, the team hit a brick wall. Four dominating California teams took their turns at beating on the Crimson, as UC-Santa Barbara (6-3), UC-San Diego (9-0) and UCLA (9-1) and Pepperdine (7-2) all garnered wins.

Bruised but certainly not beaten, the team returned to the safe confines of the East Coast in early March to start league play.