ITHACA, N.Y.--Someone please clue me in here.

Did the most recent round of core reform exempt varsity athletes from the History A and B cores?

Have the elite institutions of the Ivy League recently abandoned their commitment to the past?

Whatever the reason, everyone surrounding the men's basketball team's 70-56 drubbing of Cornell on Saturday seemed stricken with a severe case of short-term memory.

It began with Ithaca's WVBR-FM announcer Barry Leonard, who was surprisingly quick to excuse his team's poor showing.

"In terms of talent and experience, Harvard, Penn and Princeton are the class of the league--the other five teams are really just competing for the middle of the pack," Leonard said.

You would have had a very tough time convincing Dartmouth that it just could not compete when it had Harvard down 28 points en route to a 78-59 Crimson embarrassment last month in Cambridge.

Numbers rarely lie. Harvard and Cornell have three common opponents this season. Cornell beat Lehigh and Colgate handily last month and dropped a 59-52 contest with then-undefeated Marist (10-3) in which it was within two points with less than two minutes to play.

Harvard, on the other hand, lost close games to Lehigh and Colgate and never seriously threatened Marist.

That makes Harvard the team to beat?

In all fairness, the uncertainty surrounding sophomore Dan Clemente's fitness to play this season made Harvard's early preconference games little more than scrimmages to test the waters.

However, 15 games into a 26-game schedule, it becomes time to put up or shut up.

Coach Frank Sullivan, however, spoke of "getting a good bead on what we're trying to accomplish."

Meanwhile, when Clemente talked about the difficulties of the Cornell-Columia road trip after the Cornell win, the clear implication was that Harvard had the superior team that needed to buckle down and avoid letting the travel and hostile environment get to it.

Harvard, the team would have you believe, had its season in gear on the strength of three mediocre wins over Northeastern, Hartford and Santa Clara, and a single Ivy win over Cornell (with downplayed losses to St. Joseph's and Navy sandwiched in between).