In just a year and a half at the helm of the Penn wrestling, head coach Alex Tirapelle has already molded the program into his own.

The podcast renaissance has finally hit Penn Athletics, just maybe not in the place you would expect.

Penn basketball was handed 23- and 6-point losses by Yale and Brown this weekend. And I was still excited by what I saw.

In a sport where points earned can range heavily from match to match, it is imperative to hold steady to the finish.

So close. In their first home meet of the season, Penn gymnastics came within three-tenths of defeating West Chester, falling by a score of 190.875-190.600.

The final tune-up before the battle for the Ivy League saw Penn pitted against some of the best the rest of the nation has to offer. The Red and Blue trekked to South Bend, Ind., on Saturday to compete in the Northwestern Duals. On the men's side, the No. 3 Quakers dominated, going 5-0.

You win some and you lose some, but sometimes you just win them all. Last Saturday, for only the second time in school history, both the men and women’s sides for Penn squash topped Princeton in the same season. The wins against Princeton are just the most recent pieces of evidence for why this season is one of — if not the — the Quakers’ best. Historically, Penn-Princeton matchups have typically not gone in favor of the Red and Blue. Corey Henry contributed reporting.

So far, this long schedule seems to be paying dividends for the team, as demonstrated on Sunday afternoon at Hecht Tennis Center. Coming fresh off a win against Old Dominion, the Quakers sent Rutgers packing with a 6-1 finish.

Dominant. There aren’t too many better words to describe Penn women’s basketball’s weekend.

Behind 26 points, eight rebounds and five blocks from the 6-foot-9 superstar, the Bears held off a feisty Penn squad in a battle of the final two winless Ancient Eight squads, taking an early lead and holding on for a wild 89-83 win.

While Senior Day may have only been Saturday , that didn’t stop Penn Swimming and Diving from sending out their graduating class with a full weekend of success.

It was a much-needed turnaround. Following a disappointing trip to Seattle last weekend that produced losses to both East Tennessee State and Washington, Penn Men’s Tennis was in desperate need of a spark to kick-start a season full of expectations and promise. In Saturday’s meet at the Hecht Tennis Center against Middle Tennessee State, they got just that.

All season long, Penn basketball's first-year coach Steve Donahue’s mantra has been simple: “We’re trying to build this into a championship program.” On Friday night, he may have gotten a first-hand view of what one looks like.

This week, Penn wrestling coach Alex Tirapelle asked his wrestlers to take turns carrying each other across the practice room.

The Red and Blue will get a chance this weekend to rebound from a tough loss. But with non-conference play having reached its end, the next loss could be devastating. Penn women's basketball (12-3, 1-0 Ivy) will play host to Yale (11-8, 2-0) on Friday and Brown (12-4, 0-2) on Saturday in the Quakers' first Ivy doubleheader of the season.

Coming off a gripping 5-4 comeback victory at Trinity last Saturday, the Penn women (7-1, 1-1 Ivy) will have to defend their No. 2 ranking in the faces of the third-ranked Tigers (5-1, 1-1) Saturday afternoon.

On non-conference schedule: I thought we had some solid performances. We had some games where we would have liked to have played better and closed it out with some leads and some games.