With the basketball in her hands, the 6’3 Cserny has followed in the path blazed by Peljto, earning Rookie of the Year honors in 2002 and First Team All-Ivy distinctions in each of her two collegiate seasons.

In Cserny’s home country of Hungary, she has long been recognized as one of the nation’s premier female basketball players.

She has played with the Hungarian national team six times, including this past summer when her team placed 10th in the European championships.

“I cannot tell you what an experience like that does for a player’s game,” Delaney-Smith said. “Cserny’s game has taken on a level of new heights.”

After Cserny was second on the team last year in scoring with 14.7 points per game—while leading in steals and blocks with 66 and 40, respectively—it is quite high praise for her coach to talk about better possibilities from her more experienced center.

Nevertheless, Delaney-Smith discussed in length the number of options that the team will be looking to use with the quicker and more forceful Cserny.

“Last year, if you pushed Reka, you took her inside game away,” Delaney-Smith said. “She has to have room to move and slash and put it on the floor and do her thing...Oh yeah, go ahead and try and body her this year.”

And perhaps more importantly, Cserny herself recognizes the new abilities she possesses after training hard this summer.

“My main goal for this year is to make my performance more balanced than it has been in the past,” Cserny said. “I worked hard during the summer and I hope that it will help me in reaching my goal. It does not necessarily have to be something that shows up in the statistics, it is more about doing the little things that make our team better.”

Bouncing Back Off the Bench

Although Peljto, Cserny and Tubridy started almost every game and led the team in scoring and rebounding last season, take it from them that the depth of the Crimson front court will be important this year.

“We have several underclassmen ready to contribute to the front court this year—[Maureen] McCaffery, Kate Mannering and Christiana Lackner—who all bring a different style of play to the court,” Tubridy said.

Rounding out the front court is sophomore Shana Franklin, a 6’0 forward/guard who epitomizes Harvard’s versatility. With her height she can take the ball down low and score from the post. But with her shooting touch, she can drain it from beyond the arc. In her freshman year, she went 11-for-29 (38 percent) from three-point land.

“Shana Franklin is playing the most incredible level of basketball,” Delaney-Smith said. “She’s our best slasher, by far. She’s a phenomenally great three-point shooter. She’s just playing out of her mind right now.”

Unfortunately for the Crimson, Franklin suffered from mononucleosis last year, but she will be returning full strength this season.