Last year, the Harvard women’s basketball team entered the season burdened by the immense weight of expectation.

After sweeping its Ivy League schedule in 2002-2003 and returning all of its starters, Harvard was ranked first in the conference pre-season but failed its repeat bid to run the table.

This year, the pressure’s off. The team recognizes there is no longer that dominant frontcourt to rely upon, especially the Crimson’s leading scorer for the past two years, Hana Peljto ’04.

And that could be a good thing.

“We’re happy Dartmouth’s picked first,” Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith says. “We’re comfortable. We see why they were. We understand the league’s going to be tough this year.”

Missing its star but retaining its core, the Crimson will be all about balance in returning the favor to the defending Ivy champs.

“We’ll definitely be able to outrun a lot of teams because of our depth,” junior Shana Franklin says.

With the graduation of star forwards Peljto and Tricia Tubridy ’04, Harvard will now have to look elsewhere for the first time in two years to fill the gap down low.

Delaney-Smith said their departures could mean an improvement in team balance.

“When we would start a game and Hana would miss shots that Hana doesn’t usually miss,” she says, “we had a team dynamic that we always had to deal with. And that was, everyone stands around and waits for Hana to do it. And if she [wasn’t] hitting, we [would] go into panic mode.

“I want to eliminate that particular team dynamic.”

Junior Kate Mannering is one role player who stands to benefit from Harvard’s low post hole. After working hard in the offseason on her passing and scoring moves, she has, along with captain Reka Cserny, earned the chance to receive plenty of opportunities inside.

“Mannering’s a power player,” Delaney-Smith says. “She’s posting up really well.”

Mannering and junior forward Maureen McCaffery embody a hard-nosed philosophy that Delaney-Smith made a priority after last year’s disappointment.

“Basically, we were pretty unhappy with our low-post mentality last year,” Delaney-Smith says. “Other than [Peljto], I don’t think there was a player who truly wanted the ball in the low post and embraced being a low-post player. That was communicated to everybody.”