After Penn's loss to St. Joseph's, it is easy to dwell on the negatives, especially when the game was never really out of reach.
But judging from their performances against the Hawks and the rest of the Big 5 opponents, the Quakers are right where they need to be at this point in the season.
It's safe to say that the better team prevailed on Saturday, in the same way that a bigger and stronger Villanova squad topped Penn by the same margin - 10 points - almost two months earlier.
Nonetheless, the Red and Blue appeared to be in position to steal the game after the first half, having pulled down twice as many offensive rebounds as St. Joe's.
Even 6-foot-3 sophomore guard Kevin Egee managed to sneak inside and clean up a Mark Zoller miss, undeterred by the inside presence of the Hawks' 6-9, 235-pound Ahmad Nivins and 6-8 Rob Ferguson.
Having converted only two of 12 three-point shot attempts in the first stanza, Penn still maintained the lead.
The Quakers' up-tempo style of play led them to 10 fast break points for the game, eight more than the Hawks could muster.
St. Joe's coach Phil Martelli - one of the most respected coaches in the country - found it especially difficult to keep up with the offensive schemes of first-year Penn coach Glen Miller.
"I would like to one day coach offense the way coach Miller has been able to coach offense with that team," he said. "My head was spinning from watching tape and trying to figure out what the plays were [and] what the calls were."
In the end, the size of Nivins and Ferguson, along with enormous wingspan of 6-10 Pat Calathes, proved to be too much for the vertically challenged Quakers to handle.
But how can you really expect a team like Penn to contain a player as gifted as Calathes - who is shooting 46 percent from beyond the arc this season in addition to grabbing nearly seven rebounds a game - when there is not a single player like him in the Ivy League?
The same goes for Nivins, whose four offensive boards in the second half helped lead the Hawks to 18 second-chance points in the half.
While Brian Grandieri and Zoller both cited a lack of discipline on the boards and failing to box out in the second half as the reason for Penn's defeat, even Zoller had to tip his hat to the opposition.
They're just a very good team, and they pounded the ball inside," he said. "Nivins is tough to guard."
He's certainly tougher to guard than Columbia's highly-touted forward John Baumann, whom the Quakers held to ten points in their 69-43 thrashing of the Lions two weeks ago.
And something tells me that Cornell's star freshman forward, Ryan Wittman, doesn't quite stack up to Villanova's NBA prospect in the frontcourt, Curtis Sumpter.
Having now concluded the City Series portion of the season, the Quakers are better prepared than they have been in a while to dive in to the Ivy League stretch.
Most of all, Penn's thrilling win over Temple - and former coach Fran Dunphy - showed Philadelphia that Glen Miller is more than capable of bringing the Quakers back to the NCAA tournament for a third straight season.
For the next twelve games, the Red and Blue will not see another player even close to the best ones of their home city.
In addition to the Quakers' record of 3-2 in the City Series, games against North Carolina and Syracuse have given Penn more valuable experience so far than any other team in the Ancient Eight.
Honestly, there is no reason that Quakers should lose another game for the rest of the regular season.
At this point, the only team that can beat Penn is Penn . until the Tournament at least.
Andrew Todres is a sophomore in the College from New York. His e-mail address is todres@sas.upenn.edu.
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