The best win

Unless Penn wins at Miami two weeks from now or beats either Temple or Saint Joseph's next month, it faces the ghastly prospect of its best win of the season coming from within the Ivy League. RPI-wise, Penn hasn't beaten a better team yet this year, and Thursday's victory over Elon (currently ranked 255th out of 341) was the best yet, better than Monmouth (267th), The Citadel (307th) and Navy (318th), Penn's only other wins this season.

Here's the remainder of the nonconference schedule, with current RPI in parentheses:

FGCU (260th) Miami (17th) NJIT (N/A) La Salle (226) St. Joe's (112th) Temple (55th)

Penn is sitting at 235th right now. That number will surely get better once some winnable Ivy road games roll around, but it's still a far cry from previous years. That doesn't bode well for the Quakers should they manage to win the Ivy League, which I still think they have a fighting chance of doing.

Here's the Quakers' highest-quality victory from the past six Ivy championship teams. Penn's final RPI and NCAA Tournament seed from each year are in brackets:

2006-07 [89th, 14-seed]: Drexel (43rd) 2005-06 [98th, 15-seed]: Hawaii (100th) 2004-05 [58th, 13-seed]: Saint Joseph's (56) 2002-03 [59th, 11-seed]: Villanova (70th) 2001-02 [41st, 11-seed]: Temple (79th) 1999-2000 [74th, 13-seed]: California (71)