Midnight Madness: A Photo Essay

Beer bottles, Doritos bags and a lonely, forgotten, futon surrounded College senior Eric Schwartz as he stood shivering in front of the Palestra Friday night. He and dozens of other fans camped in front of the Palestra to get the best seats to watch the defending Ivy League basketball champions work their magic on unsuspecting Dartmouth centers and Yale power forwards. Of course, this happened before the ticket line got out of hand. But, if anything, the melee Friday night cemented the fact that Quaker fans have become more diehard than ever. "I sacrificed my stat test for these tickets," Schwartz said with a chuckle. After days of waiting, the area in front of the stadium resembled more of a refugee camp than a cathedral of college basketball. But most students didn't seem to mind the mess. In fact, they said they liked it. It made them feel grubby, like they earned it. "I'll never be able to do this again in my life," Wharton sophomore Marisa Carson said, adding that she was one of the few women who spent the night on the asphalt encircling the Palestra. "Between the people who have slept over, we have bonded big time," Carson said. Indeed, at the front of the line, strangers who had spent 30 or 40 hours with each other quickly became friends, joined by their universal love of Jerome Allen dunks and Tim Krug reverse lay-ups. "Now that I spent this time with them, the front row is going to be so much fun," said second-year medical student Praveen Raju, who quickly took the liberty to offer his season prediction. "They're going to win the Ivies," he added. "The Quakers are going to beat them all." The waiting paid off for most of the "squatters" as they were given a sneak peak of the 1993-94 Quakers at 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning. Penn's beloved hoopsters took the court and treated the fans to a 13-minute scrimmage as well as high-flying dunk-fest during warmups. At the back of the line, positioned behind hundreds of undergraduates half his age, graduate student Chuck Kanupke was just as excited although he did not get into the Palestra until far into the night. "It's an honor to be the oldest guy in line," Kanupke said, looking forlorn, however, about being last in line for tickets. Still, he said he and his friends, "Scream and holler and give all the cheers just like all the others." Up and down the line, past the roaring Penn Band and the students bedecked in their Penn paraphernalia, fans were forthcoming with predictions. "I think we're going to kill Princeton" said College sophomore Susie Korn. Engineering sophomore Adam Rubin was a bit more explicit. "The Quakers are going to kick ass!" he shouted.