HANOVER--The Harvard women's basketball team that has won two consecutive games this past week in convincing fashion bears scant resemblance to the team that went 1-10 to start the season before winter break. Although the Crimson's recent start was its worst in years, there was reason to hope that this team could do some soul-searching over break and turn the season around. It had been done before.

Last year's Crimson team closed out its non-conference slate with its season-worst offensive performance at Northeastern and a weak second-half effort at New Hampshire. But when Dartmouth came to town for the Ivy opener, the Crimson dealt the eventual league champions their most humiliating loss of the season.

On Saturday at Leede Arena, Harvard's 70-58 win made it six straight wins over Dartmouth in the teams' first annual meeting.

Harvard and Dartmouth are unquestionably the two most consistent programs in the Ivies. Harvard vs. Dartmouth has been both the first and last game of the entire conference slate for two years now.

The heated rivalry makes it the perfect time for Harvard to begin playing at its highest level--all it takes is some solid veteran play and rapid development from the freshmen.

"We're a totally different team now," said freshman forward Hana Peljto, the game's high scorer who, along with fellow freshman forward Tricia Tubridy, also led the team in rebounding.. "After Christmas, we had a great week of practice. We know the Ivy League is more important than the games we've played and we're just going to go after everyone else."

On Saturday, junior point guard Jenn Monti and junior forward Katie Gates added some more pages to their history of coming up big in the Dartmouth opener.

Gates knows all about hitting big threes at Leede Arena--in her freshman year, she threw up a prayer from just beyond half-court that found that net and gave Harvard a 65-63 win. No such heroics were necessary at game's end on Saturday, because Gates made a clutch three to open Harvard's scoring this time around.