Harvard can't pass up on Monti's deal

Crimson guard Jennifer Monti plays too well to lose her starting spot. During the 1998-99 Ivy League women's basketball season, the Harvard Crimson took off like a rocket, but landed like a skydiver and his unopened parachute -- with a loud, messy thud. The Crimson started off 3-0 against Ancient Eight opponents, but they went 4-7 the rest of the way to finish with a .500 league record. However, the Crimson's season ended on a happy note, actually two happy notes, thanks to then freshman point guard Jennifer Monti. At Lavietes Pavilion -- the Crimson's home court -- during last season's final Ivy League weekend, Monti hit a game-winning, buzzer-beating shot -- twice. First, in the Friday night game against Brown, Monti hit a desperate, off-balance three-point shot as the clock ticked to zero, to defeat the Bears, 69-67. The very next night against Yale, she drove the lane with six seconds remaining and hit a layup as time expired, which allowed the Crimson to edge the Elis, 54-53. "We were ecstatic," Harvard forward Melissa Johnson said. "It was just great that this freshman had the confidence to take not one game-winning shot, but two." The Crimson were excited, but not shocked. "Jen is very confident," Johnson said. "She would do things like that in practice. It's not like we'd never seen it before." Monti was thrown directly into the mix as a freshman because Lisa Kowal, the team's starting point guard, was hampered with various injuries and illnesses throughout last season. "The situation was pretty unusual because Lisa was out with injury, and [Monti] had to play 35-plus minutes a game," Johnson said. Monti made good use of that time, averaging 5.7 points and 4.2 assists per game. She was only the second freshman in Crimson history to record more than 100 assists. On two separate occasions, she recorded 11 assists -- once against Penn -- en route to being named to the Ivy League's All-Rookie team. Because of last year's success, Monti has retained her starting role, even though Kowal is healthy and capable of playing this season. When the Penn women's basketball team visits the Crimson tomorrow night, it will be Monti running the show for Harvard. "Sometimes, [Kowal and Monti] will be in there together now," Johnson said. "It's great, because in transition, they really feed off each other since they're the two fastest players on the team." Kowal has continued to take a back seat to Monti simply because the sophomore hasn't given the coaching staff a single reason to pull her out of the lineup. "I feel much more in control of what's going on on the floor," Monti said. "Defensively is where I've found the most improvement." Monti picked up exactly where she left off last season. She has already bettered her freshman mark of 106 assists and is well on her way toward breaking Harvard's single-season mark of 152. Her numbers this season are thanks in no small part to a game against Yale in January where she had another impressive, though less dramatic, performance against the Elis. Monti recorded 13 points and a school-record 14 assists in Harvard's 93-77 victory. It should be obvious by now that Monti is adept at distributing the basketball. "I think she prides herself on her ability to make great assists," Johnson said. "You have to be ready all the time. You don't know when she's going to pass it to you." Though she admitted that Harvard was "playing more like a team" and "had more balanced scoring" this season, Monti deferred the credit to her teammates. "That mostly comes because we've got such a strong frontcourt," Monti said. "I think my game feeds off of their performances." Monti's game is all about knowing the offense inside-out and knowing how to find the right player at the right time. "She's got a great sense of who's doing what on the court, who's hot," Johnson said. "She's got a great feel for the intangibles of the game." Only a sophomore, Monti will be in Cambridge "feeling intangibles" and feeding the ball to her teammates for a long time to come.