What might have been

Sportswriters love speculation, so naturally I pounced on this interesting article in today's Crimson. Apparently the Harvard lady squashers defeated Yale last night in a match that was pushed back eight days because of snow.

The kicker is that in those eight days happened to lie the Howe Cup, the women's national championship meet. And check out this quote from Crimson senior Kyla Grigg about the mother of all lame-duck matches.

I think it was actually to our advantage, because if we had played [last Wednesday] and lost, we would have had a worse seeding at the Howe Cup.

I'll say. As it stood, Harvard got the third seed while Yale took fifth, and the Crimson shocked No. 2 Penn in the semifinals.

If, say, Harvard had lost that match, Yale would have taken the No. 3 seed, with Harvard at No. 4 and Trinity at No. 5 (because of Harvard's 5-4 regular-season win in that series).

And not only did Penn beat Yale 6-3 early in the regular season, it topped the Elis by the same score a day after that crushing Howe Cup loss.

So I can't help but wonder what that Valentine's Day snowstorm did to the University's chances for a legit national champion. But I guess that's just speculation.