When Cornell and Harvard met towards the end the season a year ago, the Big Red dealt the Crimson a crushing extra-inning defeat that cost Harvard the Ivy title.

This Saturday's game, however, was merely an opportunity for the already-crowned Ivy champion Crimson to assert its dominance over the upset-minded defending champions.

With freshman pitcher Tiffany Whitton on the mound, the Big Red had no chance. She tossed a three-hit shutout and struck out seven to lead Harvard to a 3-0 win. The shutout gave the Crimson (19-19, 11-1 Ivy) an upbeat ending to its regular season and prevented the Big Red (28-16, 3-7) from succeeding in the spoiler's role.

"It really dawned on us that we needed to approach every game like the second against Dartmouth, that is, feeling relaxed and confident," said captain Ghia Godfree, referring to Thursday's 2-0 win that clinched the Ivy title. "Our main motivation was to show Cornell that we could beat them [convincingly], since we beat them by such a slim margin last time."

For the first four innings, Cornell ace Nicole Zitarelli managed to keep Harvard off the scoreboard, but in the fifth, the Crimson finally broke the game open.

Senior Jessie Amberg opened the inning with a single. Harvard made that leadoff hit count as Whitton bunted Amberg over to second and Godfree drove her home with a single to center.

The Crimson was not done yet. Next up was captain Deborah Abeles, who had homered off of Zitarelli in Harvard's dramatic 1-0 win over Cornell on April 10th that set the tone for the teams' respective seasons. Zitarelli didn't give Abeles anything to hit this time, walking her for the first of two times on the day.

Zitarelli nearly escaped the jam when she got McKendry to hit a potential double-play ball. The Big Red managed to force Abeles at second, but got nothing more as McKendry beat the throw to first.