That quintessentially laissez-faire website, wikipedia.com, has done it again.

Recently, I looked up “the law of averages” and got, more or less, what I expected: “...the view that eventually, everything ‘evens out.’”

Then I thought about Harvard women’s hoops, which blew a potentially huge chance to close in on Ivy leader Dartmouth by losing to Brown, 78-63, on Friday night.

My scientific intuition tells me the Crimson will be okay.

Here’s why: Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith has won 207 Ivy League games in her Harvard career, more than any coach ever. She’s fiery, and she didn’t win those games by accident.

On Saturday night, her team didn’t look like it had dropped two games in the standings.

Harvard rolled up its sleeves, dusted its jeans, and taught Yale a 90-55 lesson.

Junior Maureen McCaffery scored 14 points for the Crimson. Before leaving to sign autographs for local schoolchildren, she wore a smile about as wide as the margin of victory—which, by the way, was the largest in the series’ 57-game history.

“You can’t sulk,” she said. “You have to be ready to play the next game.”

In the end, success is almost invariably taken for granted.

After all, the 2004-05 installment of Harvard women’s hoops—an outfit that boasts five of the previous nine Ivy titles—was, at this point, supposed to be mired in a rebuilding slog.

After graduating one of the Ivies’ most dominant scorers of the past decade, the incomparable Hana Peljto ’04, the Crimson was not highly favored to win the title for the first time in recent years.

That distinction, instead, went to Dartmouth.

Funny, those preseason predictions.

After taking care of Brown on Saturday, Dartmouth jumped to a healthy two-game lead over Harvard and the Bears and into the Ivy League drivers’ seat.