Nittwits President Jennifer Owsiany may never look at fortune cookies the same way again.

The senior journalism student, who heads Penn State's unofficial men's basketball fan club, qualified for the final round of voting for ESPN.com's Page 2 Miss Bracket competition last week. This weekend, she went to College Buffet with friends for some dinner but got more than just some General Tso's chicken.

After her dinner, she went where everybody goes after Chinese -- straight to an all-knowing dessert.

Her fortune read: You will be called to hold a position of high honor and responsibility.

Her friends told her it was a sure sign she'd win the contest. She pleaded with them not to jinx her.

They didn't -- consider it a prediction come true.

After five days of online balloting and 16,641 total votes cast, Owsiany finished with the inaugural Miss Bracket crown, or in this case, an ESPN mobile phone with six months of activation.

"I was just crying last night, jumping all around," Owsiany said yesterday, decked out literally head to toe in Penn State gear. She wore a Penn State basketball T-shirt and Nittany Lion sandals.

Owsiany used a late weekend charge to beat out Connecticut's Becka Suchy, who had been leading by more than 20 percent, by a slim 3.9 percent margin, she said. That statistic is the last Owsiany saw immediately before ESPN.com closed the balloting.

"I'm just full of emotion right now," she said. "My friends were like, 'You're Miss Bracket.' This is like the whole United States. Wow, I never expected this."

The win capped an exciting night for Owsiany, a Naples, Fla., native. Monday night, her second basketball love, the Florida Gators won the men's NCAA championship 73-57 against UCLA.

Trailing late in the competition, Owsiany and her friends lobbied for more votes, storming myspace.com, facebook.com and various athletic message boards for support. It was a campaign that could have gotten Richard M. Nixon a third term if he wanted it.

And as the effort continued, the votes kept coming in. It was a welcoming sight to friend and fellow Nittwit Bryan Schuster (junior-journalism), who was worried Owsiany wouldn't be able to make up the ground on Suchy.

"I knew she was the best female fan in the country," he said, "and I think a lot of people on campus knew that and it's nice to see that the rest of the country agreed."

Another friend and a Nittwits co-founder never flinched during the process.

"I told her all along that she was going to win, and she was going to make her push on Monday," Justin Casavant (senior-geography) said. "I kind of saw it coming."

According to Eleanor Hong, an ESPN.com editor, Owsiany was one of "hundreds" of entrants collected from on-campus tryouts conducted by Page 2 staff members Jim Caple and Mary Buckheit at Gonzaga, UCLA, Duke and Connecticut, and online essays from everywhere else.

After Owsiany's initial essay and picture got her to the second round of voting, she had to submit a video singing the Penn State fight song. While she admits singing is not her forte, Owsiany dressed up in her normal blue-and-white wig to serenade the Nittany Lion faithful. She sang in front of Old Main and the Nittany Lion Shrine while passers-by snapped pictures and smiled.

"I hated the video," she said. "The others were pretty boring, though. The one Duke girl, she didn't even smile in her video. She just kind of stood there. With the video, I didn't feel like I expressed my craziness as I do at games. There was just so much going on. It was freezing cold, there were photographers and other people standing by. I just kind of felt sheltered down, I guess."

Passive wouldn't be the word to describe her. Owsiany has camped out for basketball games and welcomed the Nittany Lions back at the airport after their stunning defeat of then-No. 6 Illinois earlier this year. Her friends describe her as a fan that never quits. That's what Hong saw in Owsiany's online photo picturing her in the wig and by the Nittany Shrine.

"Just by her photo, I think it exemplified how enthusiastic she was and how much school spirit she had," she said.

As for the fight song, Hong added, "In her video, she did great. She dressed up for the part."

For Owsiany, the win adds to a whirlwind of a week, full of interviews that will continue tonight when she talks to ESPN and other media outlets, she said. After her video is long forgotten, she might just head back to College Buffet again, anxious to see what the next fortune cookie might bring.

"I guess it's my good luck charm. So, I'll have to," she said.