Coming into the weekend, Penn, Cornell and Yale were within a half a game of each other in the Ivy title race, but the Quakers made sure that didn't last. Against a Big Red squad that was a whole lot tougher than most Penn fans would have thought, the Quakers eked out an 83-71 win that was closer than the score might indicate.

To quote Frank Sinatra, the Quakers will "try to make a brand new start of it in old New York this weekend." One week after being shellacked by both Harvard and Dartmouth, the womnen's basketball team (8-12, 3-4 Ivy) will look to rebound and regain ground in the Ivy League.

If the Penn wrestling team is going to make a move, it will have to be soon. A week after being soundly defeated by Cornell and then losing a disappointing match to Columbia, the Quakers will try to turn it around this weekend with three scheduled matches.

When Columbia takes the floor tonight at the Palestra, it will be clear to even the casual basketball fan who its anchors are. This is a squad that runs through its big men.

PRINCETON, N.J., Feb. 15 - It might only be Day One of the 2007 Ivy League Women's Swimming Championship, but Penn has already made history. "We had a finalist in every event, and that's the first time that's happened in school history," coach Mike Schnur said.

Cornell center Andrew Naeve knows his role. Bully your way to the hoop and score. Get back on defense. Repeat. It shows up on his stat sheet: In 651 minutes this season, he has taken only one three-point shot. According to Naeve, "I don't even remember taking that three.

Since its season began, the team has focused on one meet. And the time has come for the Penn women's swim team. From today until Saturday, the Ivy League Championship Meet will be held at Princeton's Denunzio Pool. Unlike most Ancient Eight sports, the swimming champion is not determined by the regular season.

It took 157 words for Joe Scott to explain his goals for the rest of the season after his Tigers fell to 1-6 in the Ivy League Tuesday at the Palestra. It took only six to show just how far the Princeton program has fallen under Scott's watch. It's not about the end result.

Penn's three-game winning streak has by no means been pretty. The Quakers have not run anyone off the Palestra floor, and they have played sloppily for stretches on both ends of the floor. But three wins are three wins, and they have vaulted Penn back into sole possession of first place in the Ivy League at 6-1.

All throughout the Big 5 season, Penn has played a smooth, up-tempo, non-traditional game. Last night, the Quakers finally learned how to play ugly. Against a Princeton offense that is the slowest in Division I (53.1 possessions per game), Penn accepted that it couldn't run up and down the court.

Last night Penn and Princeton played their 215th basketball game against each other. The game on the court may have diminished in quality from previous years, but the state of the programs is still strong. And what makes Penn and Princeton special is not just their seemingly endless string of Ivy League Championships or the crowds that come to watch them play, it is the tradition of the programs.

The Quakers had heard it all. Throw out the records. A trap game against a 1-5 team. A speed bump on the road to an Ivy League title. No bump here. Just full speed ahead. Penn got over a brief lapse in the second half with a 12-0 run to put Princeton away in a 48-35 win at the Palestra.

One-horse race. That's that would come to mind if someone was asked to describe the EIWA tournament over the past five years. The word "parity" would not have been in EIWA coaches' vocabularies, but it is slowly finding its way back to their tongues this year.

With Penn smothering Princeton's offense, Stephen Danley's layup to put the Quakers up by 10 seemed like it could be the final dagger to the Tigers' hopes for an upset. The Princeton squad was not ready to concede yet. Danley's basket would be the last points that Penn would score for the next eight minutes.

Before this last week, the standings appeared as if they might result in a legitimate Ivy race for the first time in several years. But Yale played itself out of that race in Ithaca when it was struck by free-throw karma. One week after Penn beat itself in New Haven, Conn.

With Penn up by eight against Harvard and with an open look, Brennan Votel was in a perfect spot to put up the three-pointer. It is a shot that has only been successful for him 16 percent of the time so far this season, but he took the chance. The gamble paid off, and as the ball swished through the net, Votel must have felt that it was going to be a good night.

About 10 minutes after Saturday's win over Harvard, with the crowd still filing out of the Palestra, a collective cheer went up from the Penn fans walking past the tennis courts. The news quickly spread through the crowd - Cornell had beaten Yale, 60-59, returning the Quakers to their rightful spot atop the Ivy standings.