A road game against Princeton midway through the season, expected to be tight, ended in a 25-point Harvard triumph. By that time, the league knew that Harvard was for real.

The closure at the end of the Ivy League season was poetic. The last two games of the Ivy schedule were a three-point win over Yale and an overtime victory over Dartmouth.

The answer to the lingering question of whether the Crimson could win a close game was written in the Dartmouth basketball nets, cut down after the emotional Harvard victory.

The regular season over, Harvard faced the daunting task of travelling to Tennessee to face No. 12 Vanderbilt in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

The Commodores were bigger, stronger and infinitely more tournament-tested than the Crimson. But in the first half of that game Harvard used the national stage to show what had gotten them there in the first place.

Harvard set an NCAA tournament record by connecting on eight three-pointers in the first half, taking a 41-40 lead into the locker room after going up by as much as seven points.

Although Vanderbilt's adjusted man-to-man defense in the second half extinguished Harvard's downtown fire, the Crimson kept it close almost until the end.

If nothing else, Harvard showed that the Ivy League can hold in Southern-dominated women's basketball.

The one unavoidable question that lingers after this historic season is, what's next? The Harvard women's basketball team cruised to an Ivy League title and avoided embarrassment against a more-talented NCAA tournament opponent.

The only goal left for the Crimson is to be playing basketball a year from today.