HANOVER, N.H.--The No. 3 Harvard women's hockey team is going back to Minneapolis.

With a 7-1 victory over No. 4 St. Lawrence in the ECAC semifinals on Saturday, the Crimson all but officially assured itself one of the four berths in the 2001 Frozen Four at the University of Minnesota's Mariucci Arena.

Yesterday, Dartmouth defeated Harvard 3-1 to deny the Crimson its second ECAC title in three years in front of a league record crowd of 2,592.

At 8 p.m. last night, the official NCAA pairings were announced online. No. 1 Dartmouth (26-3-1) will play No. 4 St. Lawrence (23-7-3) at 4 p.m. on Friday, while Harvard (23-9-0) will play No. 3 Minnesota-Duluth (26-5-4) later the same evening. The consolation and championship games will be played on Sunday.

The 2001 Frozen Four is the first-ever NCAA-sponsored women's ice hockey tournament. USA Hockey had been sponsoring the national collegiate tournament since 1998, including the 1999 tournament at Mariucci which Harvard won.

Harvard's blowout of St. Lawrence allowed the Crimson to avoid last year's disasterous ending when the team was denied a national tournament berth following an ECAC semifinal loss to Dartmouth

"I'm just very glad we took care of business ourselves, and we didn't leave it up to anyone else," said Harvard Coach Katey Stone.

As expected, both junior co-captain Jennifer Botterill and senior Tammy Shewchuk set milestones this weekend. Botterill's second-period goal against Dartmouth gave her 79 consecutive games with a point--a new collegiate hockey record. Shewchuk scored her 300th career point in the third period against St. Lawrence.