The Gophers’ scouting report on the Illini for Thursday’s game probably had a page on Jenna Smith and a paragraph on Rebecca Harris.

Smith, of course, is the early front-runner for the Big Ten Player of the Year (sorry Emmy). The 6-3 forward from Bloomington Kennedy leads the conference in scoring (18.3 ppg) and rebounding (10.1 rpg). And she did her thing against the Gophers with 20 points and seven rebounds.

But the player who really killed the Gophers was Rebecca Harris, a 5-8 senior guard. She had a career-high 23 points, sinking four of six shots behind the arc, and three of five inside it. She also made five of six free throws, had six rebounds and guarded Fox most of the game.

Emily Fox led the Gophers with 16 points but she needed to take 18 shots to get there and was 0-for-3 on three-pointers.

Now back to Harris, in four previous Big Ten games she had scored 28 points — total, that is– and started only one game. Even with her big game against the U, she is averaging only 7.4 points.

She had 10 points vs. Northwestern, seven vs. Wisconsin, four vs. Penn State, seven vs. Indiana in her first conference start when she played only 22 minutes.

She played 37 minutes against the U in her sixth start of the season. It was a breakout game.

Maybe first-year Illini coach Jolette Law did not know what she had inHarris. Last season, she started only one game. She transferred to Illinois as a junior from well-known Rend Lake College in Ina, Ill. Sounds like a made-up name and town.

At Rend Lake, she averaged 23.6 points as a sophomore, making her the third-leading scorer among JC players. So the shooting touch was there. It was just well hidden.

The Illini are now 5-2 at home, Assembly Hall. Must have been quite an atmosphere there Thursday with a crowd of 936. Maybe the Gophers didn’t know when the game started, maybe that explains why they fell behind 40-22 in the first half before waking up.

What do you think?

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 12:08 pm and is filed under All, Gophers women's basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.