“She just flat out can play the game,” said Delaney-Smith. “She’s got height. She’s got three-point shooting. She can drive to the hole. She’s a great passer. She’s a very good defender. She’s the whole package.”

Delaney-Smith expects that Cserny, like reigning Ivy Rookie of the Year Hana Peljto the year before, will make an immediate difference in the Ivies this year.

“Right now I don’t see freshmen impacting other teams like our freshman our impacting us,” Delaney-Smith said. “What Reka is doing and what Hana did last year is special stuff.”

And Cserny welcomes the high expectations of her as a freshman.

“I know that freshman generally don’t start, but in Europe we don’t have these rules that the younger people play less,” Cserny said. “I think the only thing that should decide who starts is how you play in practice. There is only a two- or three- year age difference in the players so it’s not so important.”

Peljto applauds Cserny’s attitude as a testament to her maturity.

“She makes very good decisions on the court,” Peljto said. “She doesn’t have the freshman mentality that all freshman go through.”

Peljto, a fellow European who emigrated to the U.S. from Serbia in 1995, provides a welcome reference for Cserny as she encounters challenges in playing American basketball.

“She’s a great team player,” Peljto said. “She makes everyone look good and she’ll make a very good impact this year and for years to come.”

In her first collegiate games, Cserny caught her opposition by surprise. She scored 19 points and grabbed a team-high eight rebounds in a 77-54 victory over Wagner. The second game of the season saw Cserny score 13 points and handle nine boards in a 93-77 Crimson loss to BU.

But thereafter, the release of Harvard game tapes meant that Reka was no longer a secret. The immediate impact that Cserny had in her first two games was tempered in the next two contests, in which the freshman scored four and zero points against Fairfield and Villanova, respectively.

The simultaneous decrease in scoring and increase in turnovers was also a result of the adjustments that Cserny has had to make after having played European basketball for 11 years. The way traveling is called in the U.S. has been difficult for Cserny to adjust to at the outset of the season.

“I hope for more consistency from the officiating [regarding the traveling turnovers], but she’ll adjust her game,” junior guard Jenn Monti said. “It’s tough to have so much be expected of her right away.”

Additionally, the change in style and flow of the game is something that Cserny is finding different from her days in Hungary.

“In Europe, it is more important that your basketball technique is good, and it’s not so aggressive and not so quick as here,” Cserny said. “In America, the athleticism of the player is more important than in Europe. I still have to make a lot of adjustments.”