We've seen our first Harvard game now, and we had fun: so did the Crimson, throttling Holy Cross in a surprisingly lopsided game. The home team controlled the boards behind solid rebounding from Adrian Budischak and Liz Tindal, and shot 8 for 19 from outside.

Almost all the games we saw in Minnesota took place either in huge spaces or in tiny gyms: Lavietes reminds us of the Sports Pavilion, where our Gophers played the last time they weren't very good-- but Lavietes is even smaller, and brings you closer to the teams.

That's an advantage-- you might even call it intimacy. The disadvantages include the lack of chairback seats (so that fans with back trouble have no recourse) and the old-school scoreboard-- the only way to keep track of player stats, or even of whole-game stats such as rebounds, in real time is to tally them yourself. Yes, the guys play there too. And yes, we'll be back.