As Penn was putting the finishing touches on its 21-11 win at then-No. 22 Lafayette Saturday, Villanova was putting the finishing touches on its first 0-3 start since 1995.
Come Saturday night when the teams meet at Franklin Field, none of that will matter.
It won't matter that Robert Irvin looked like a three-year starter when he began his first career game 11-for-11 or that the defensive line manhandled Lafayette.
On the other side, it won't matter that Villanova lost at home to Lehigh, which lost at home to Albany, which lost at home to Fordham, which got blown out by Columbia.
If the last two seasons are any indication, the 20,000 or so fans will be in for a classic.
"It's like a Big 5 game in basketball," Wildcats senior quarterback Marvin Burroughs said. "Everybody's out there fighting for bragging rights."
And like so many intra-city hoops games in recent memory, not only do the records not matter, but it seems that everything that happened up to the last minute doesn't matter.
There was Penn's loss two years ago, when the clock read zeroes but the game wasn't over, and the Quakers were much closer than they should have been to a miracle play on the untimed down.
Then there was last season, when Villanova rallied from a 17-point deficit to take a four-point lead in the final minutes and still almost lost. Penn took it down to Villanova's 3-yard line after two fourth-down conversions and had a chance to win the game, but Pat McDermott was sacked as time ran out.
Typical Penn-Villanova.
"We've had two very, very good games with them," Quakers coach Al Bagnoli said. "We've been frustrated that both times, we haven't been able to hold on at the end."
The 10-game series, which has been mostly dormant since its inception in 1905, is just as tight as the games between the two teams. Penn won the first five meetings. Then Villanova took the next five.
Even when the Quakers put together a 17-game winning streak from 2002-04, it was bookended by losses to the 'Cats.
So, don't think that this is just another game to the Quakers, especially for the juniors and seniors, who have been through the disappointment of the last two seasons.
"We've been looking forward to this for a long time," captain Scotty Williams said. "It's paramount that we come out with the right mindset."
However, in this matchup, it doesn't matter so much how they start the game as it does how they finish.
Zachary Levine is a senior mathematics major from Delmar, N.Y., and is former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is zlevine@sas.upenn.edu.
