Athlete of the Week: Reka Cserny ’05

With a share of the Ivy title on the line, the Cornell women’s basketball team had more than one chance to beat Harvard Friday night.

But freshman Reka Cserny led the Crimson through two overtimes to a 77-75 victory in the first game of Harvard’s weekend sweep that ensured the Crimson at least a share of the Ivy crown.

Cserny scored 10 of Harvard’s 15 points in overtime on her way to a game-high 28. She was named Ivy League Rookie of the Week for the second straight week and the sixth time this season.

“She has gained a lot of confidence,” sophomore Tricia Tubridy said. “In the second OT against Cornell, she was going right to the basket.”

With the game on the line, Cserny carried the Crimson to a 76-74 lead with seven straight points in the second overtime. The rookie also took a charge from Cornell tri-captain Breean Walas with less than one minute remaining, foiling whatever plan the Big Red had concocted during a timeout.

Cserny’s production wasn’t limited to putting points on the board. She also grabbed 13 rebounds and tallied four steals.

Cornell missed a potential game-winner at the end of regulation, and also failed to get a shot off as time expired in the first overtime.

“We needed luck to be able to continue the game,” Cserny said. “But I have so much confidence in the team that I didn’t even thing about losing.”

The following afternoon, Cserny again led all scorers, this time with 22 points in Harvard’s 61-49 win over Columbia.

Cserny’s Crimson career could have begun a year earlier, but she deferred matriculation in order to compete for Hungary in the European Junior Championships. She also spent the year taking classes in computer science and polishing her English.

The rookie made a huge splash in her long-awaited entrance to college basketball, scoring 19 points and grabbing eight boards against Wagner on Nov. 17. For an encore, she netted 13 points against BU the following Tuesday.

But Harvard’s secret was out of the bag, and Cserny was limited to four points against Fairfield and held scoreless against Villanova the next weekend.

The decrease in production was caused by Cserny’s difficulty adjusting to a new style of basketball as well as differences in the way travelling was called between the two countries, but such woes have long since been forgotten.

“I’m enjoying it more and more,” Cserny said. “The hardest weekend was when I couldn’t play.”

Cserny suffered an ankle injury against Colgate on Jan. 28, forcing her to sit out contests against Brown and Yale the following weekend.

Once her ankle healed, her development only accelerated even more.

“Since coming back from injury, she’s been great,” Tubridy said. “She has been all over the place on the court.”

In addition to scoring at an impressive clip, averaging 16.3 points per game, Cserny has also become more comfortable on the court as she adjusted to her new team and a somewhat unfamiliar language.

“She’s gotten more and more vocal every day,” senior Jenn Monti said. “When she first started, you had to pry words from her. We need her voice out there.”

Cserny has clearly made the adjustments she needed to make, as she and sophomore Hana Peljto, the most potent scoring tandem in the league, combine to spearhead the Ivy’s top-scoring offense.

Since Harvard’s 59-55 loss to Princeton on Jan. 11, the Crimson has won 10 games in a row and seems to show no sign of letting up entering its final three contests of the regular season, beginning with Yale and Brown this weekend. Harvard only needs one more win to secure the Ivy title outright.

“I’m sure that the Yale game will be a huge game,” Cserny said. “Even though we only need one win in the following three games, we want to win all of them.”