Harvard women’s basketball coach Kathy Delaney-Smith is excited. She has set an incredibly challenging schedule, raved about every Crimson player who has touched the floor and predicted a top-30 finish for her team, the reigning Ivy Champions.

So what can stop Harvard? A rising star such as Penn’s Jewel Clark, the physicality of a tough Brown team or the impact of transfer students at Columbia and Cornell? For a team that returns at the top, there is only one automatic route to failure—complacency. However, the Crimson’s nonconference schedule will not allow an apathetic team to leave the court without severely bruised egos and a giant mar on a potentially legendary season.

“One of the strong things we want to do is not be complacent in our nonconference games,” Delaney-Smith said. “This is by far the toughest nonconference schedule we’ve ever had and maybe the toughest in the league. It might be one of the toughest ever in the Ivy League.”

While Harvard’s schedule from last season couldn’t compare to this year’s, the Crimson did face a number of formidable opponents, in Villanova, Kansas St. and Syracuse, each of which resulted in defeat. The closest loss was by a 59-51 margin against Villanova. This year’s team is looking for much more than near-misses. In fact, a 10-2 record in pre-Ivy play is one of the team’s goals.

“There’s been this really subtle mentality, Villanova, we only lost by eight—that’s bad mentality,” Delaney-Smith said. “We are better than that. That has clearly infiltrated our team. We are not going out just to do well against Minnesota, we will go out to win.”

The No. 15 Golden Gophers are not unknown to Harvard, as Minnesota would have been the Crimson’s next opponent had it beaten the Tar Heels at NCAAs last year.

“I think [the Gophers] have the athletes. I was not only impressed with their athleticism but I was impressed with how smart they are on the floor,” Delaney-Smith said regarding Minnesota after Harvard lost to UNC, 85-58.

Harvard has actually faced the Gophers once before—in 1980 at the Princeton Tournament, where the Crimson lost 101-42.

Minnesota is one of three opponents ranked in the top-25 by the Associated Press Preseason Poll, along with No. 12 Vanderbilt, a possible competitor in the Vanderbilt Invitational, and No. 20 Boston College.

The Gophers return all of their starters, including 2002 Big Ten Player of the Year Lindsay Whalen, and Lindsay Lieser, who holds every Minnesota three-point field goal record.

Lieser will test a Crimson defense that had a tough time containing trey shooters last year, but Harvard expects improvement due to the athleticism of its guards. Junior Dirkje Dunham, as well as junior transfer Bev Moore and top recruit Jessica Holsey, pose an answer to a question of guard imbalance.

“The North Carolina matchup had to do with our guard mismatch,” Delaney-Smith said. “I don’t think anyone could do that to us now.”

Harvard’s intention of playing up on the ball for the entire game presents the team’s athletic side and the potential for completely disrupting offenses by forcing opponents to rely on their speed as their only option.

“I hope to wreak havoc with our defense,” Delaney-Smith said. “I hope to go 40 minutes of playing up on the ball and seeing what they can do. So that’s what teams have done to us, and that’s why I’ve waited ten years to be able to do that to other teams.”

With the Crimson’s returning veterans and a possible solution for guard mismatches, one of the few question marks for this team is height. Last year, Tar Heels guard Nikki Teasley, who recently won a WNBA title with the Los.Angeles Sparks, stood at 6’0, made the blunt observation that she could see straight over Crimson point guard Jenn Monti ’02.