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Freshman Jewel Clark has played a key role in Penn's title run. Clark and the Quakers now anxiously await the NCAAs. (Stefan Miltchev/The Daily Pennsylvanian)

The players of the Penn women's basketball team can't impress their friends this year by saying that they'll be spending their spring break in Cancun or the Bahamas. They won't even have the opportunity to travel to Florida -- probably. But the Ivy League champion and NCAA tournament-bound Quakers (22-5, 14-0 Ivy League) will still enjoy their vacation, wherever the gods of college basketball -- or at least the seeding committee -- order them to go. The Red and Blue became the first team in the nation to clinch an NCAA berth by defeating Harvard in Boston on February 24. Now, nearly two weeks later, Penn has joined the 1997 Crimson squad in completing just the second perfect season in women's Ivy League history, and will carry a current 21-game winning streak into the postseason. Only one question remains -- who will the Quakers face in the first round? The ESPN selection show airing at 5 p.m. on Sunday will reveal the answer, but Penn, which expects to receive a 13 or 14 seed in a bracket of 16, knows that any opponent will be tough. "Obviously all the teams in the top 16 are going to be good," said Penn senior co-captain Diana Caramanico, referring to the teams that will make up the top four seeds of each region in the tournament. "So I don't really have a preference [to who we play]." And, unlike the men's version of March Madness, opening round contests are held at the sites of the teams with the top four seeds -- so the Red and Blue could be headed to any of a variety of schools in the U.S., from Louisiana Tech to Utah to Duke. For now, the Quakers will benefit from some time off until a Sunday afternoon practice at the Palestra. Immediately thereafter, the team will head next door to the Dunning Center to turn on ESPN and see where they're headed for Spring Break. As of yet, with a week before their first round game -- which will be held either Friday or Saturday -- the Penn players have not dedicated much time to preparing for what might very well be the highlight of their basketball careers. Yet, the coaching staff has been diligent in recent weeks in compiling and analyzing tapes of potential opponents. Penn assistant coach Joe McGeever has been particularly busy in this respect. "He's been taping everyone in the top 15 for the past two weeks," Caramanico said. Regardless of who Penn draws, though, the players are certain that they will be able to compete and, at best, pull off an upset to extend the nation's longest active winning streak, which began on December 28. "I really think we can win," Penn senior co-captain Erin Ladley said. "We've pulled out a lot of games in tough situations." And it could be one of Ladley's traditionally explosive late-game performances to pull the team out of a difficult spot that the Quakers will need to manufacture a victory and surprise the women's basketball world. Penn, at this point, appears to be in a relaxed frame of mind following Wednesday night's emotional win over Princeton in the regular season finale at the Palestra. But while the Red and Blue were grateful to have won the game against the Tigers, in which they cemented their undefeated Ivy season, Penn understands that it must improve its level of play in an NCAA tournament matchup against one of the country's premier teams. Caramanico, for one, has little doubt that her club can do just that. "I'm confident that our team is going to come close to playing one of the best games we can play," she said. "I just have a feeling that's going to happen. Good things [will] happen if we play our best game."

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