Last season, the Harvard women's basketball team broke away from the pack to claim the conference crown by four games.

This year, with the bottom three teams a combined 1-15 in Ivy play, there was bound to be a little more congestion at the top.

A month into the Ancient Eight season, the defending champs find themselves in a three-way tie for first with Cornell and Dartmouth.

The three squads - each of which stands at 5-1 - spent the past weekend holding serve on the road against their Ivy inferiors. Both Harvard and Dartmouth netted a pair of double-digit victories at Brown and at Yale. The Big Red nipped the Tigers in Princeton, N.J. on Friday night before demolishing the Quakers, 80-56, Saturday night at the Palestra.

Cornell - led by the League's third-leading scorer and second-leading rebounder Jeomi Maduka - will have the first chance to pull away as the Ivy season approaches the home stretch. The Big Red visit Harvard and Dartmouth this weekend, looking to extend a four-game winning streak and seize an outright conference lead.

Remember the Lions. With 6-foot-3 center Chelsea Frazier sitting out Columbia's last three contests, why not let a guard pick up the rebounding slack?

Since Frazier's injury, senior Michele Gage has filled up the box score - averaging 20 points and 10 boards - to lead the Lions to three straight wins after a 1-2 conference start. The four Ivy wins equal Columbia's 2007 total.

Leading by example as a senior captain, Gage was particularly dominant in the Lions road triumph at Princeton on Saturday.

The versatile guard totaled 24 points, 13 rebounds and three steals in the 14-point win.

A night earlier, Gage buried the Quakers with another 20-point showing, tallying 14 of her team's 27 first-half points.

Big Green's Tex Appeal. Brittney Smith is leaving a Texas-sized imprint on her first Ivy season.

The freshman forward has now recorded a double-double in four straight games for the Big Green, all Dartmouth wins.

Midway through her inaugural Ancient Eight campaign, the Lone Star State native has already outshone her older sister, sophomore Margaret Smith.

Though the elder Smith is third on the Big Green squad with 6.4 rebounds per contest, her younger sibling leads the League with over eight a game.

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