Harvard 54, Yale 53

Someone should have given Monti a blood test following this weekend's performance because the rookie played as if she had ice in her veins.

One night after drilling a game-winning, off-balance three-pointer against Brown at the buzzer, Monti offered up a reprise versus Yale. With just 6.4 seconds remaining in the game, Harvard co-captain Suzie Miller inbounded the ball to Monti in the right corner of the Crimson's offensive end of the floor, and the heart-stopping sequence was set into motion.

Monti held the ball in the corner as the clock wound down, and she looked to pass to freshman forward Lindsay Ryba in the paint. But the Bulldogs stuck a double team on Monti in an attempt to trap her in the corner and force a turnover--that decision would come back to bite the Bulldogs.

Monti dribbled left around the double team and drove into the lane where she faked a pass with poetic subtlety. The effect was pronounced as Yale's frontcourt defenders parted like the Red Sea before Moses, and Monti finger-rolled the ball just over the front rim with her left hand as time expired.

"I have some people who want that last shot, who like pressure, and I love that," said Harvard Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith. "I think there's a higher power helping us, I really do. I also believe there are players who really will it--that's Jen."

Monti's heroics capped off a second half that saw Harvard erase a 10-point Yale lead. In an otherwise close contest with 11 lead changes and four ties, the Crimson found itself trailing 43-33 with 14:35 left to play before embarking on a 13-0 run in a six-minute span led by three consecutive buckets courtesy of Miller.

The run began when Monti drove through the Yale defense and hit a lay-up to pull Harvard within eight. Then Miller went to work. Playing in her final home weekend along with her three senior classmates, Miller started things off with a gorgeous reverse lay-up off a beautiful lob pass from fellow co-captain Sarah Russell.

After a missed jumper by Yale sophomore forward Lily Glick, Monti pushed the ball up in transition and kicked it to Miller in the right corner for one of her five treys on the night to make it a three-point game. Following a Yale timeout and a blocked shot by Ryba, sophomore point guard Lisa Kowal found Miller on the left wing for a 16-foot jumper that pulled Harvard within one.

Less than one minute later, Kowal herself gave the Crimson the lead when she used a hesitation dribble to freeze her defender, Yale junior guard Kelly Denit, then blew by Denit and kissed a shot high off the glass for a 44-43 Harvard advantage. Senior center Rose Janowski capped off Harvard's run with an impressive, 180-degree, turnaround hook over her Yale counterpart Katy Grubbs at the 8:41 mark.