For Penn track and field, the importance of Friday’s Fastrack National Invite is crucial.

There’s nothing quite like catching up with old friends. This weekend, Penn basketball coach Steve Donahue will face off against Cornell — a team he coached for a decade — part of a back-to-back road set also featuring a trip to Columbia, which will be the Quakers’ third Ivy weekend of the season.

This summer, however, three members of the men’s lacrosse team will add white to their color scheme and play for a different and perhaps more meaningful purpose.

As the winter sports start to head down the final stretch, we discussed which Penn Athletics team has the most critical games this upcoming weekend.

Penn basketball swept Dartmouth and Harvard over the weekend at the Palestra. How did the Quakers manage to secure their first two Ivy wins of the season?

The mystique of Philadelphia college basketball has been well-documented – with the Palestra being named the nation’s most “Hallowed Hall” in a December 2014 NCAA.com feature – and that allure makes it quite difficult for local figures to stay away. For Penn men’s basketball, consider Joe Mihalich Jr. the latest victim.

Make that two-thirds. This past weekend another Penn team took home a share of a three-way Ivy League title when men’s fencing finished first in the Championship tournament along with Columbia and Princeton.

With the season opener on Feb. 20 against Michigan around the corner, Penn men’s lacrosse is back to work and has already seen its first live action of 2016 against other teams.

They got just what they needed. In a pair of duals at Brown and Harvard on Feb. 6, Penn wrestling swept the competition. After taking down the Bears, 25-9, in Providence, Ri. the Quakersmade the trek to Cambridge, Ma., and dealt the Crimson a 26-9 beatdown.

For Penn Tennis, the courts of the Hecht Tennis Center and Penn Park provide a homecourt advantage like no other.

Penn basketball, playing with newfound confidence, continued to move in the right direction by recording its second straight Ivy League win in a 67-57 thrashing of Harvard.

It took awhile, but the Quakers are on the board in the 14-game tournament. Penn defeated Dartmouth 71-64 at the Palestra on Friday night to notch their first Ivy League win of the season.

After some mixed results at the Northwestern Duals, both the No. 3 Penn men’s and No. 9 women’s fencing teams are hoping for positive prospects in Ithaca, N.Y., as the Quakers head to Cornell this weekend to compete in the Ivy League Championships.

When Wesley Saunders’ final three-point attempt clanked out last March in the first round of the NCAA tournament the Crimson spotlight immediately shifted to Siyani Chambers.

Penn Wrestling seems to love a good road trip. The Quakers will hit the road not just once, but twice in the span of a single day to face Brown in Providence at 1PM and Harvard in Boston at 6PM this coming Saturday.

Another one. This weekend Penn squash will have to fend off another top-five opponent eager to put a dent in their championship aspirations along with a team willing to bare it all in order to pull off a monumental upset.

It may not be a triumphant return of a beloved tradition, but the Red and Blue could sure use a triumph or two this weekend.