A FRONT ROW VIEW: No glamour in this Penn win

EASTON -- Throwing streamers at the Palestra. Playing four Big 5 games a year. The annual contest against Lafayette. Ah, tradition. Penn and the Leopards have now met 29 times, with the Quakers having won 27. There's nothing like a fierce rivalry to really get the fans emotional. Scoreboard, scoreboard, scoreboard rang the chant from the Lafayette student section. It was humorous because it was so sad. The chant rang out just a minute into the game when the Leopards were leading 2-0, and the students knew Lafayette had little chance of holding on much longer. Still coach John Leone believed. For four minutes his Leopards held the lead. Outmanned, outclassed and outplayed, the Leopards always fought hard, even after a few late plays by the Quakers allowed Penn to open up a 19-point halftime lead. He believed. Despite a 2-14 Leopards team without its top player, Craig Kowadla, Leone thought Lafayette could defeat the top-25 caliber Quakers. He said if he didn't believe, he might as well not have shown up. "I'm not crazy," Leone said. "Why not? We're out there. Why not? Some nights the ball is going to go in. It just doesn't happen very often for us. Why not?" The Lafayette players were genuinely excited by this contest. You know, how Penn fans get up for Massachusetts or Michigan. After all, how often does a national power visit Allan P. Kirby Field House? From the Penn vantage point, there was little redeeming value to this game. The Quakers got back some confidence after losing to St. Joseph's Saturday. They have some momentum going into this weekend's Princeton matchup. Penn coach Fran Dunphy even got a look at next year's starters while they received significant minutes. Dunphy said he just plays the teams on his schedule. That doesn't really explain why Lafayette is on there. Maybe it's because Penn is not so far removed from being competitive with the Patriot League teams. Regardless, nobody will say the Quakers played stellar. They started off trailing. They were sloppy early. Penn came out much better in the second half, raising its level of play. Dunphy said he doesn't give fiery halftime speeches when he is disappointed with his team's first-half play. "I usually save my fiery speeches for the next day," Dunphy said. But the Quakers have the day off, so junior Tim Krug told his coach: "You can fire off tomorrow." The game actually had a high-school quality about it. Twice the Lafayette cheerleaders took the floor during timeouts. The first time the music wouldn't start. The second, the players returned to the court early. Things really weren't going well in Easton. The shot clock at one end ceased to work too. But the Lafayette students were having fun. With plenty of time on their hands, they even came up with this gem: "At least we have the tallest player on the court." Penn-Lafayette. What a tradition. Adam Rubin is a Wharton senior from Bellmore, N.Y., and former sports editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian.