When Harvard's second-round game against Arkansas began the following Monday night, the Crimson was minus its starting center. Minutes after the opening tip, Janowski went into surgery, where doctors removed both the affected ovary and the Fallopian tube. Since her other ovary and corresponding Fallopian tube had been removed in the previous surgery, the operation left Janowski without the ability to reproduce.

"It was the same [type of] cyst that caused it [my freshman year], but instead of being so large, it was just in a difficult position. [The doctors] said there were cysts all around," she says. "So it was bound to go at any time."

Who would have thought that this story could have a happy ending?

Fully recovered and stronger than ever, Janowski is currently Harvard's leading rebounder (7.3 rpg) and third leading scorer (11.5 ppg). In the Crimson's season-opening win over Boston University, Janowski scored a career-high 29 points on 13-of-15 shooting, and sank two free throws in the waning seconds of regulation to force overtime.

She has muscled her way onto the blocks, rebounded with authority and finished with ease. Loudly and clearly, she has answered the question of who has the ability to fill the interior presence vacated by three-time Ivy League Player of the Year Allison Feaster '98.

"This past summer, especially, I worked on just going out with an attitude," Janowski says. "When I play at the [Malkin Athletic Center (MAC)], instead of saying, 'I can play with these guys,' it's like, 'I'm better than these people.'"

It is a new look for Janowski. Everybody knows the kid who eats, drinks and sleeps basketball; the girl who plays horse with herself in the backyard; the guy who goes to bed in his Laimbeer goggles. Until this summer, Janowski was never that kid. Until this summer, she never had the chance.

Vermont is to basketball as Indiana is to Ethan Allen. Janowski went to summer basketball camps and played Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) hoops, but the game was not bred into her the way it may have been for other players. Only one other member of her high school squad even went on to play college ball.

"We had a lot of people [in high school] who came to practice, did their thing, and didn't even think about basketball afterwards," she says. "You can't ask much more from a small farming community where they have other work to do."

"No matter how much experience you get in the game of basketball, if you come from the state of Vermont or a smaller, kind of rural, state, you're not going to have the Division I experience until you actually play Division I," she adds.

Janowski passed up scholarship offers from Syracuse and St. Joseph's-traditionally considered bigger basketball schools (with bigger gyms)-to attend Harvard, but still she was not prepared for the level of competition and physicality she faced.

"I was a skinny little bugger, and I got pushed around a lot," she says. "My first couple of weeks, just playing at the MAC, I was like, 'Whoa, what am I doing? Is this the right thing?'"

It did not help her adjustment that she was diagnosed with a cyst during a routine physical at the start of her freshman season. The enormous cyst, which bordered on being cancerous, had to be lanced, and one ovary and one Fallopian tube were removed in the process.

The operation was successful, but it stymied Janowski's progress on the court. The following summer she had to work to help pay off her tuition-the price of saying 'no' to Syracuse.

Two summers ago, she worked from 2 p.m. to midnight, lifting 40-pound metal parts on an assembly line. It did not leave much time, or energy, to focus on playing basketball.