It was not until last summer, when she took a job at the Harvard Law School, that Janowski was able to devote significant time to improving her game.

"I've had more time to play basketball this summer," she says. "Basketball was more accessible to me because a lot of people play it here."

The extra time has shown on the court. Besides a nagging flu that kept her out of the team's last game, against the University of Rhode Island, Janowski has been free of the injuries that marred earlier seasons.

"[Janowski's] physical presence has really peaked this year," says Harvard Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith. "Physically she's as strong as they come. I don't know that she'll be in a match-up this year with anybody who's stronger than she is. She's also very mobile and athletic for a 6'2" center. She's developed her lowpost moves so that she has more than one move, and she can finish."

As she lay in a hospital bed at the Stanford Medical Center last March, Janowski was able to watch the first two minutes of the Arkansas game before being taken into surgery. A physical presence is what Harvard needed, but she was the last person who could provide it.

"It was hard to watch that game because I knew they would be tired, and they would need that extra person in order to stay in the game," she says, "I knew that Arkansas was an easier team [than Stanford], and it just felt so hard to let [my teammates] down in a way. But there's a place for everything, and I can't linger on that too much."

She didn't. As if her teammates would ever let her. As if she would ever let herself.

"Rose is such a spiritual, deep, positive person," Delaney-Smith says. "And she has a very strong support network both from her own family and from close friends, and she knows the basketball team is part of that support network."

Janowski's ordeal is mostly over. She will never have another ovarian cyst and, if she can help it, her team will never miss her again.

"I'm on hormone therapy for the rest of my life, but I think it's a good trade-off to being healthy and being able to live a normal life," Janowski says.

Whatever may have happened afterwards, Janowski got to play, and got to win, in that big gym in Palo Alto. How could she not return to Cambridge with her spirit intact?

"It's motivating once you're able to get back on the road to improving basketball," she says. "It's like, 'I'm ready, I'm healthy now, I can go ahead and start it up."

The dream was as real as the nightmare that followed. And Janowski is all the better for it.