Freshman Meinhardt a ‘San Francisco treat’

Katie Meinhardt has an appreciation for the classics. To watch her play brings back memories of classic point guards. Her short straight black hair flies wildly behind her lean 5-foot 9-inch body as she glides up the court handling the ball with ease and looking to pass first, but willing to shoot if she’s open. It’s more than just this classic style that Bob Cousy made popular in the early sixties and Jason Kidd has currently revived that Meinhardt enjoys. The Boston University freshman point guard also enjoys the stylings of Beethoven and Bach.

While many college basketball players have grown up with an emphasis on basketball, the 18-year-old San Francisco native grew up in a family that was musically inclined. Her father played the piano until high school and her mother played through college in various symphonies and recitals. Meinhardt played up until this year when, faced with the difficulty of fitting a piano in a dorm room, she had to give it up.

Meinhardt still plays the role of the maestro on the basketball court. She is averaging 11.2 points per game after suffering a preseason elbow injury that left her sidelined for the first four games of the regular season. Since conference play began on Jan. 9, she has averaged 13.2 points per game and earned America East Rookie of the Week honors four times. From the first time she broke into the starting lineup on Dec. 30 in a game at the University of South Florida, BU has a record of 11-7, compared to a 2-6 record without her in the starting lineup.

When the conference awards are given out next week, she is expected to win the Conference Rookie of the Year award. The addition of Meinhardt to the team is one of the main reasons why the Terriers consider this year one of their best chances to win the conference tournament since they last won in 1988. Her teammate and backcourt partner, junior Katie Terhune, describes her as the perfect point guard to play with.

‘She can create shots easily and she’s a great scorer,’ said Terhune.

Her worth has proven to be more valuable than a scoring average can quantify. Meinhardt has taken over a spot that Terhune used to occupy all by herself. It’s no small feat, considering Terhune, who led BU in scoring over her first two seasons with 17.4 points per game, is averaging 17.1 points a game this season.

‘She doesn’t think about the magnitude of the shot,’ said BU head coach Margaret McKeon. ‘She just knows, she’s open at the three-point line and we’re down two with two minutes left, so that could be a good shot. I think that’s why she separates herself from the rest.’

It was just that situation, down two points within 2:16 left to play in the game, that Meinhardt found herself in on Feb. 15 at the University of Hartford. Meinhardt hit a three-pointer to give BU a 58-57 lead, which would stand as the final score.

On Feb. 6 in a game at the University of Albany, Meinhardt had just broken a 55-55 tie with 20 seconds to play in the game, when she converted a basket and a foul shot to give BU the win.

‘She’s had a lot of chances to step up and she’s made some great shots. She’s really kept us in a lot of games,’ Terhune said.

The sight of Meinhardt calmly stepping up and hitting a pressure shot as defenses try to focus too much on the more established Terhune is exactly what McKeon envisioned when she recruited Meinhardt.

‘That’s her mentality. That’s what I recruited her for,’ said McKeon. ‘She’s the type of kid that’s fearless. She sees the good in every situation.’

In the battle for Meinhardt, McKeon had to contend with Harvard University and Georgetown University for Meinhardt’s commitment beyond her playing days at St. Ignatius Prep in San Francisco. The prospect of beating out a Big East school for a basketball recruit or an Ivy League school for a player like Meinhardt who takes her studies seriously, was a long shot at best. But McKeon wouldn’t be discouraged.

‘I probably saw Meinhardt play more than anyone I’ve recruited here. I kind of baby-sat her,’ McKeon said.

An East Coast swing by the Meinhardt family in August of 2001 had Katie visiting the two Boston schools and then heading down to Washington D.C. for a tour of Georgetown. Then they were set to return to California, with a night’s layover in Boston. Kurt Meinhardt, Katie’s father, knew BU was near the top of the list, so he wasn’t surprised by what came next.

‘After the Georgetown tour, the whole family kind of looked at each other and Katie said, ‘BU’s the one,” recalled the elder Meinhardt.

A morning meeting was set up with McKeon during the layover in Boston. It was then that Meinhardt gave her a verbal commitment to come to school in the fall of 2002.

‘I was flabbergasted,’ McKeon said. ‘I was hugging her parents, hugging her, hugging her little brother and hugging everyone in the office. I was so ecstatic she decided to come to Boston.’

McKeon had just pulled off quite a coup, and she knew it. When schools such as the University of California at Berkeley called in the fall of 2001, they were told it was too late, Meinhardt had already made her decision.

Cal-Berkeley was particularly tough to turn down. One of the school’s most famous basketball alumni, Jason Kidd, had been a role model for Meinhardt on the court. Kurt and Katie had seen Kidd play high school locally and were impressed by his unselfishness and how he was be able to take his play up a notch in order to help his team win.

‘We used to tape his games,’ Katie Meinhardt said. ‘My dad had a digital video system to edit and break down the highlight clips. And we used to end up with a bunch of highlight tapes that I could watch and learn from.

‘He was a great inspiration. The way he could make the big shot, or make a great pass. In transition he would pass when the defender thought he would shoot, and shoot when they thought he would pass.’

‘She has some of the same aspects of his game,’ Kurt Meinhardt said of Katie and Jason Kidd. ‘She plays just as hard, and she can hit a three in order to draw a defender out on her.’

The shots haven’t always been falling for Meinhardt. She missed all of the preseason and part of the season with a fluke elbow injury. When she came back, she struggled at first.

‘I had hurt it in the summer playing a game, and then I tore it dribbling in practice,’ Meinhardt said. ‘I had never been out with an injury at all during high school, so it was tough. I had hopes of being a big part of the team.’

She finally got her chance on Dec. 6, playing nine minutes and scoring two points in a game against Montana State University.

‘I was out of whack,’ said Meinhardt. ‘It took me a while to get into a flow. All I could do was work hard in practice.’

The hard work in practice started to pay off in the Jan. 5 game against Farleigh Dickinson University. Meinhardt broke out with a season-high 24 points on 8-11 shooting from the field.

‘Coach had been telling me, ‘You need to break out.” Meinhardt said. ‘Katie Terhune got me a couple of wide open threes that I hit, and then my confidence took off.’

With her new-found confidence, her level of play took off. It hasn’t stopped rising either, as Meinhardt has scored in double figures in 11 of her last 13 games. Her play has McKeon wondering just how good the freshman can be.

‘She’s a young freshman,’ said McKeon. ‘Once she grows into her body and gets herself more conditioned, she could be really dangerous in the years to come.’

While Meinhardt might soon be reaching new heights with her play in next weekend’s conference tournament and in the years to come, she still expects to be reaching a crescendo long after her playing days are over.

‘I’m going to pick up the piano after college again,’ Meinhardt said. ‘I’ll have more time to play then. Right now I’m a little busy.’