Although there was still 7:54 to play when Cornell opened its 10-point advantage, Harvard abandoned an effective inside game and began shooting almost exclusively from the perimeter. Despite the Crimson's frontcourt trio of Janowski, co-captain Sarah Russell and freshman forward Lindsay Ryba shooting a combined 11-of-18 for the game, they only accounted for one Harvard bucket in the final eight minutes.

The Crimson's guards, by contrast, shot a combined 14-of-51 and looked for the shot more often than the pass into the post during the game's final minutes.

It looked, however, like Gates might lead the Crimson to a come-from-behind victory when she connected on back-to-back treys to cut the Big Red's lead to 66-62 with 3:22 remaining.

But Cornell senior guard Carolyn Janiak converted a transition lay-up at the other end on a nice pass from Walas and drew a foul. Janiak converted the three-point play and gave the Big Red enough breathing room to outlast the late Crimson surge.

"We wanted the ball to go inside way more," Delaney-Smith said. "We didn't have the positional people to play a zone offense, but we should have gone inside."

Harvard looked fatigued after a long trip to Ithaca that came on the heels of a week-long battle with the flu. At one point during the last week, only eight of Harvard's 16 players were healthy enough to attend practice.

Janowski, Russell, Ryba and Miller were still recovering from their illnesses during the weekend, and sophomore point guard Lisa Kowal was a late scratch from the line-up in both of Harvard's games. Kowal was running a temperature of 101.8 at game time on Friday night.

"We had some defensive breakdowns," Russell said. "We couldn't consistently rebound. We knew that Cornell didn't like pressure, and we had a really hard time applying pressure. Our zone breakdowns were ridiculous."

Cornell's leading scorer, senior forward Kristie Riccio, finished with 18 points to complement Walas. Janowski recorded a double-double (11 points, 11 rebounds) to go along with four assists in the losing cause. Gates scored 13, Ryba finished with 12 and Miller tallied 10 points and eight boards for Harvard.

In the battle of freshmen point guards, Harvard's Jen Monti came up short against Walas. Monti turned in a solid effort with nine points, eight assists and only three turnovers, but Walas was better in the match-up of Ivy League Rookie of the Year candidates.

Harvard 75, Columbia 62

The weekend started out in promising fashion for Harvard. Behind an 18-point outing from Egelhoff and 16 points from Janowski, the Crimson had an easy time disposing of Columbia at Levien Gym by a score of 75-62.

Egelhoff led a three-point shooting charge by the Crimson that the Lions could not contain. The junior was 3-of-4 from distance on a night when Harvard shot 43.8 percent from downtown, including 2-of-3 efforts by Miller and freshman guard Laura Barnard.

"We played four guards at times for defensive purposes, and I don't like it offensively," Delaney-Smith said. "But I said to Laura [after the game], 'I love when a player makes me look like a stupid coach for not playing her more,' and that's Laura's stat line. Suzie Miller probably shouldn't have played tonight [due to illness], and she did great."

Meanwhile, Janowski had her way inside against an undersized Columbia squad. Despite only attempting nine shots, the senior center hit five of those and went 6-of-8 from the charity stripe when the Lions had no choice but to hack at her. Janowski also pulled down six rebounds.