Midway through the conference slate, Dartmouth is in a familiar spot. The Big Green sport a 1-7 record that puts them at the bottom of the barrel, a place they have seen more than their fair share of in recent years.
But when Penn goes into Leede Arena tonight, it's well-aware that this isn't the same Dartmouth the Quakers have beaten 22 times in a row.
Two weeks ago, Penn saw its 16-point second-half lead evaporate against an efficient Big Green offense in 13 minutes, but managed to escape with a 68-66 victory.
If coach Glen Miller wants his team's streak to hit 23, he knows it will have to learn from what it did wrong during that 13-minute stretch.
"They got the ball inside quite a bit on us," he said. "I think some of their three-point shots were a result of getting the ball inside.
"They scored off their post cut-in pattern a few times. . We've gotta put it all together defensively."
While the Quakers have certainly gotten stingier since the onset of Ivy play, they will be tested by dynamic swingman Alex Barnett, a 6-foot-5 junior averaging 16.3 points and 7.1 rebounds per game.
Last time around Barnett went off for 18 and six, and added three steals on the defensive end.
"We gotta make him work," senior guard Brian Grandieri said. "We did a good job last time running him off a couple screens. Our help defense has to be aware of him."
Outside of Barnett, Dartmouth has relied on a deep rotation to put together moderate production and keep the team afloat. Coach Terry Dunn - who does not make himself or his players available to speak to student newspapers - has given 12 players double-digit minutes per game.
Junior guard Devon Mosley, the team's best outside shooter, is the second scoring option, putting up 11.9 points per game to go with a team-high 1.9 steals per game.
But the Big Green's hallmark this season has been their streakiness.
After playing the Quakers extremely tough on the road, they turned around and lost to Brown and Yale by a combined 65 points.
For Penn, though, the primary obstacle lies in the seven-hour bus trip to Hanover.
However, playing the Big Green on the front end of the back-to-back is a much more enticing proposition than traveling up from Boston to play them on Saturday.
"When you go up to Dartmouth second, I always think it might be the hardest Ivy League win," Grandieri said.
Tonight, however, Penn will have had the luxury of a night's sleep in New Hampshire. And with a game at Harvard looming and a 4-3 conference record, the fact that there's still an outside shot at a title run is likely in the back of the Quakers' minds.
But Penn knows that, unlike last time around, the focus has to be there from the tip-off to the closing buzzer.
"We've gotta put it all together for 40 minutes, instead of in-and-out of execution," Miller said. "Hopefully this weekend we play 80 minutes of basketball."
