Three straight wins to start the Ivy season--that is the standard the Harvard women's basketball team will be trying to meet for the fifth year in a row when it starts its southern New England road swing at Yale tonight before taking on Brown tomorrow.

Every year since the undefeated Ivy squad of '96-97, the Crimson (3-10, 1-0 Ivy) has been entering league play a step ahead of its competition--a tribute to the lessons learned from its annual challenging non-conference schedule.

A solid start this year will be the toughest yet to come by for Harvard, however. The upcoming road games in the cities of New Haven and Providence will make for tougher opposition than the perennially powerless pairing of Columbia and Cornell that came up early in the Crimson's schedule for most of the late 90's.

Although as of late neither Brown nor Yale has managed to challenge the upper echelon of the standings, this year may well be different.

Brown (5-7, 0-0) returns all five starters from a team that--despite holding the cellar for much of the season--surprisingly beat up Harvard worse than any Ivy team other than Dartmouth in 2000.

The Bears have already beaten Northeastern and Rhode Island, two common opponents who the Crimson failed to overcome. Harvard did manage a win against New Hampshire, who beat Brown in the Bears' season opener.

Brown is led by rising star Barbara Maloni, a sophomore guard, who has blossomed into the ninth-leading scorer in the nation with a season average of 21 ppg after leading all Ivy freshman in scoring last season.

Returning Harvard players, however, will remember Maloni best for tearing up the Crimson defense down that stretch at Providence last year, when she single-handedly turned a close game into a 75-56 Bear blowout--the Bears' first Ivy win after nine straight losses and one of the most surprising scores of the Ivy season. Maloni finished with 30 points.

"They played well that game, but we obviously helped them out a lot with the turnovers," junior forward Katie Gates said.

The Bears also managed to cut a 32-point deficit into single digits down the stretch in the team's first meeting of 2000. Harvard has every reason not to underestimate Brown at any stage of tomorrow's game.

"We're focussing mainly on the transition game and boxing out," Gates said. "We're not sure they've been that consistent in their shooting."

In order for the Crimson to win, the team will have to keep its turnover total close to single digits. If Harvard plays with lax ball control like when it committed 28 turnovers against Boston University, Maloni--who is 14th in the country with 3.6 steals per game--is more than capable of making Harvard pay for its mistakes.

A familiar name on the Brown squad belongs to Heidi Egelhoff, younger sister of Courtney Egelhoff '00. One of Brown's most reliable bench players last season, the younger Egelhoff has struggled with limited playing time so far this season.

Yale (4-8, 0-0) is one team that will be especially happy to see that the elder Egelhoff--who burned the Elis for five treys in a single half last year--has moved on. But Harvard still has its fair share of Bulldog-killers left on the team. Junior guard Jenn Monti has always come up big against Yale, dishing out a school-record 16 assists in a game last season, and hitting a buzzer-beating winner during her freshman year.

This season, Yale may have the upper hand in the perimeter game due to its own sharpshooting guard, sophomore Maria Smear, whose 47.5 three-point field goal percentage ranks 13th in the nation. Smear is averaging more than two threes per game.

Harvard swept Yale in last year's games, but its 70-68 overtime win in New Haven could not have been much closer. But with senior center Melissa Johnson relatively healthy and the added presence of the freshmen Tricia Tubridy and Hana Peljto inside, Harvard stands a good chance of dominanting the boards like it did in its 93-77 win over the Elis at Lavietes last season.

To come out with wins in either game, Harvard will focus on getting off to a solid start--that was key in its past two wins against Boston University and Dartmouth, which the Crimson opened with 10-0 and 7-0 runs, respectively. Gates has led the way, scoring five in each of those runs.

"In previous games we've started down 10, but now we're starting up 10," Gates said. "That's been making all the difference."

The game at Yale tip-offs at 6 p.m. tonight. Harvard's chance at redemption against Brown will begin at 7 p.m. tomorrow.