The women’s basketball team will leave Ithaca one last time this weekend to face off against Ivy foes Harvard and Dartmouth. Coming off a dramatic win against Brown, where junior forward Claire Fitzpatrick made a game-winning layup with three seconds remaining, the Red seeks to finish the season on a positive note and conclude Ivy play with a winning record.“The win against Brown was really great, and we know that we can continue our momentum this weekend,” Fitzpatrick said. “A winning record in Ivy play would just mean so much to a lot of players on this team, and I would be lying to say that we weren’t thinking about it.” The Red (11-14, 5-6 Ivy League) will begin the weekend against Dartmouth (4-21, 2-9) in Hanover, N.H. Historically an Ivy League powerhouse, the Green is having one of its poorest seasons to date, dropping 13 consecutive contests and winning just four games overall. However, in the previous matchup between the Red and the Green, Dartmouth kept the score close, as Cornell snuck by with a narrow 49-45 victory in a game that could have gone either way. In addition, the Red has not swept Dartmouth in the regular season since 2008 — the year that Cornell won the Ivy championship. “A sweep against Dartmouth would be really huge for us,” said junior forward Taylor Flynn. “We haven’t swept them since the ’08 season, and a win on Friday would just show how far we have come as a program.” In addition to Dartmouth, the Harvard Crimson (14-11, 7-4) will be a formidable foe for the Red, as the team travels to Boston for its final road game of the season. Harvard comes into the game with quality wins against non-conference foes Massachusetts, TCU, St. Johns and Boston University. In addition, Harvard also defeated Cornell earlier in the season. In a matchup in which the Red played host to Harvard, the Crimson went on an 8-1 run in the beginning of the second half to shut down Cornell and seal a 67-57 victory. “We really think that we can take Harvard,” Flynn said. “We realize that they are a really good team, but we think that if we just play our game, we can come away with a win.” A win against either Harvard or Dartmouth would not only put the Red at .500, but it would allow the team to walk away from the 2011-2012 campaign with a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment, according to Flynn.“We are going into these last games of the season with a mentality that we will have no regrets after the season is over,” she said. “If you think about it, we can really accomplish a lot of great things in the next few days. We know that if we play to our potential, we can not only come out of the weekend with the feeling that we gave our best effort, but we can also bring back a couple of wins as well.”
Original Author: Nicholas Rielly