Picture this: the Harvard men's basketball team, having seen a 30-25 halftime lead slip away to Brown, finds itself in need of a big play.

Suddenly, a freshman forward named Kyle Snowden grabs a pass on the baseline, takes a quick step, and whips a dunk into the net--as if there were not a single defender around--to spark the team to victory.

The star freshman has been making these sort of plays all season.

Thus far, he has won five Ivy League Rookies of the Week, and is the reigning Co-Player of the Week, averaging 11.2 points per game, 7.4 rebounds per game and 55.7 field goal percentage.

His rebounding average and field-goal percentage are both third in the league.

"I never though that it would happen like this," a chuckling Snowden said of his extraordinary freshman hardcout experience this season. "I don't know what to say about it."

His body language shows it, too. During post-game interviews, Snowden glances around back and forth, as if he is looking for someone.

His body fidgets around, tapping his feet rhythmically on the ground. But when asked about his own play, Snowden shyly smiles and looks down to the floor, feeling undeserving of his accolades.

"My [teammates] make it easy for me," Snowden says. "I owe it all to the support of my teammates.

"If you had told me over the summer that I would be starting, I would have thought that you were crazy."

With each new accomplishment, the young freshman feels more and more awed.

Snowden grew up in Milton, Massachusetts, and attended the Thayer Academy.

There he distinguished himself by winning the 1993 Ward S. Donner Prize for Athletics, Scholarship, and Character. On the court, he turned some heads by being named on the All-Independent Team by the Boston Globe.

However, Snowden was not the go-to guy on the Thayer team.

"I was in sort of a shadow in high school," he says. "There was another guy that is now at UMass [that was the star]. I was never known to make the big play."