EDITORIAL & OPINION: Congrats on a great season

The men's basketball team wrapped up the Ivy League championship last night, so today, we celebrate. Fittingly, few of the previous contests have been played for higher stakes than this milestone battle -- the victorious Quakers wrapped up both their 18th Ivy League title and an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Ivy League champions. Go on, let the words roll around on your tongue. They may have lost their familiarity, but never their sweetness. This wasn't a hard-fought contest or a game that could have gone either way. It was a coronation, plain and simple, and it was a pleasure to watch. For the hundreds of fans who made the trek to Jadwin Gymnasium and the 1,250 gathered at the Palestra; for those watching in bars and living rooms and those tuned in to the radio across America; and most of all, for the twelve members of the men's basketball team and their coach, Fran Dunphy, it was an incomparably sweet moment. Redemption. Glory. Victory by a crushing margin. It was a night for exuberance and celebration, an evening summed up in one sentence: Your Pennsylvania Quakers are the 1998 Ivy League men's basketball champions. Six consecutive times the Quakers had fallen to their rivals; for three straight years, the team has had to watch the NCAA Tournament on TV. But not this year. This year, the Pennsylvania Quakers are headed to the Big Dance. For the seniors on the team, who seized their last chance to go to the show, and for the other members of the team who will have the chance to return to the NCAAs next year, this victory transformed the season from successful to triumphant. For the Penn community, the game was a unifying force, the rare event capable of bringing 10 groups together to sponsor a close-circuit game feed for a raucous crowd of 1,250 at the Palestra. Take justifiable pride in our school and in the 12 members of the men's basketball team who have worked all season for this moment: Brown, Cody, Jordan and Langel; Owens, Plummer, Romanczuk and Ryan; Sanger, Solomito, Sullivan and Tross. Champions all. Congratulations.