As another season of Ivy League basketball commences Friday night for Penn, this hoops-crazed campus probably will forget its other perennial champion -- the wrestling team.
Sure, the Quakers are good on the hardwood. They've won eight of the last 11 Ancient Eight titles.
But what's little-known is that if Penn's singlet-clad athletes can defeat Cornell Saturday afternoon in the Palestra, they will match anything their flashy, jump-shooting brethren have accomplished.
On the mats, the Quakers have owned at least a share of the Ivy title eight times in the past decade. Saturday will mark the one-year anniversary of Cornell's 22-10 victory over Penn, which snapped the Red and Blue's streak of seven consecutive championships.
The Quakers' wrestlers are further distinguished through national rankings.
Penn is the National Wrestling Coaches' Association's No. 16 team -- its opponent this weekend is No. 15.
When was the last time the basketball team cracked the top 25?
But enough with the internal conflict. This column isn't meant to start a civil war, it's about Penn, Cornell and wrestling.
Although the Quakers are 4-5 and the Big Red is 3-6, the sport is very competitive in the Ancient Eight and schools don't go undefeated.
The Red and Blue defeated No. 4 Iowa State, yet fell to unranked Minnesota in the same weekend.
The Big Red, meanwhile, lost to the same Wisconsin team Penn beat, but finished 10th in a field of 61 at the prestigious Midlands Invitational, Dec. 30.
At the Evanston, Ill., tournament, four Cornell wrestlers placed in the top six.
Dustin Manotti was first runner-up in the 149-pound weight class, while returning NCAA champion Travis Lee finished third at 133 pounds, after wrestling his previous two seasons at 125. Joe Mazzurco and Matt Greenberg finished fourth and sixth at 165 and 197 pounds, respectively.
But in dual meets, it's all about matchups.
In evaluating the Quakers and Big Red, predicting the outcome becomes difficult. Where one team is strong, the other is weak.
While it's unlikely Penn can expect its 149-pound freshman Rob Hitschler to take down the fifth-ranked Manotti, it's equally implausible that Penn heavyweight Matt Feast, ranked No. 3 in the nation, should be upended by Cornell's Matt Bogumil.
"Matchups in dual meets are very important," Penn coach Roger Reina said. "At the same time, while there are certain matchups on paper that may be predictable, paper doesn't go out and wrestle."
He added that while he hopes Feast can score bonus points in his matches, they are never "gimmes."
Still, Reina had to acknowledge that certain weight classes likely will swing the meet one way or another.
For example, the Quakers' 165-pound Rich Ferguson has become the beneficiary of a Cornell injury. Instead of facing No. 16 Mazzurco -- who broke his jaw in two places in a bout against Cal State-Fullerton -- Ferguson will draw either Dan Miracola or Dave Post, both of whom are relatively untested.
The Red and Blue also will welcome the return of Doug McGraw, the 11th-ranked 141-pounder who has been out most of the season due to injury.
Other rubber matches, however, potentially favor the Big Red. At 174 pounds, Penn's Matt Herrington might not be 100 percent against Cornell's Tyler Baier -- both are top 15 grapplers.
Likewise, the Big Red's Matt Greenberg is a slight favorite over the Quakers' Marcus Schontube at 197 pounds.
Amidst all this unpredictability and over-analysis, however, one thing is almost certain. Last year, Cornell downed Penn, and went on to win it all.
The correlation runs some 15 years deep.
So while the campus dwells on the Penn-Yale box score Saturday afternoon, and the basketball team moves on to Providence, what's not to be forgotten is that in our own backyard, another champion likely will be crowned.
