Of all the lumps it has taken this season, the women's basketball team's matchup with Cornell a month ago may have left the deepest bruise. The Big Red starting frontcourt poured in 34 points en route to an 80-56 victory. But the Quakers had a six-hour bus trip up to Ithaca, N.

For the wrestling team, the last four months of bouts, pins and takedowns all comes down to this weekend. Starting tomorrow and finishing up Sunday, the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association will hold its conference tournament at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.

Talk about learning quickly: The softball team will play more games this spring break than it has year. Penn (2-2 ) will travel to Orlando, Fla., to take part in the Rebel Spring Games. They will play 10 contests over six days, with just one day off. Their opponents include seven different teams from all over the country: Cleveland State, Butler, Tenesee-Martin, Indiana-Purdue, Robert Morris, Monmouth and Wisconsin-Green Bay.

While their classmates are throwing back shots of tequila over spring break next week, eight Quakers will be taking their shot at college fencing's highest honor at the NCAA Championships in Columbus, Ohio, from March 13-16. But according to coach Dave Micahnik, Penn's biggest challenge won't take place on the piste.

Becca Edwards notched a hat trick against North Carolina last weekend, but that's not why she's been the center of attention among her lacrosse teammates. When she joined the Quakers, the attacker had never experienced jetlag. The native of Flourtown, Pa.

He might be moving on to Division-I football, but quarterback John Hurley may have already seen more time in the limelight than he will in his four years of college. Hurley, a marquee member of Penn football's Class of 2012, was the signal-caller for St. Xavier of Cincinnati, which finished 2007 ranked No.

Karin Brower is barely concerned about it. Rudy Fuller is slightly apprehensive. Al Bagnoli says it "scares" him. All three Penn coaches - Brower of women's lacrosse, Fuller of men's soccer and Bagnoli of football - said that the financial-aid reforms at Harvard, Penn, Yale, Dartmouth and Brown have turned the distribution of aid money into a front-burner issue in the Ivy League.

When he left Providence, R.I. and the Brown basketball program for the head coaching job at Penn, Glen Miller was faced with the difficult task of replacing Philadelphia icon Fran Dunphy. But in 1993, 13 years before he took over for Dunphy, Miller was replacing some of the lower-profile denizens of the athletic world.

Not many kids from Andre Wilkins' neighborhood make it to Ivy League schools. In fact, not many kids from the Jane/Finch area of northern Toronto - from where the Cornell guard hails - make it to college at all. The neighborhood has developed a reputation as one of the roughest in Canada and has been compared to Compton, Calif.

Lineman Joe Silberzweig excelled on both sides of the ball at Scarsdale High. Now, the 6-foot-1, 280-pounder is set to throw the offensive playbook out the window to join Al Bagnoli's defensive line next season. He expects to play at nose guard or defensive tackle for Bagnoli.

The decimated women's softball team was only able to keep it together for so long. Already at only 14 players, the roster was further whittled down to 11 thanks to illness and exams before yesterday's doubleheader at Delaware. In fact, the situation was so dire that King rang up Penn soccer midfielder Natalie Capuano - who last played softball in high school - to temporarily join the team.

Bad calls are an unfortunate but ubiquitous aspect of most athletic competitions. But in some college sports - such as tennis and squash - opponents traditionally officiate each other, making bad calls even harder to swallow. Brandon O'Gara, a senior co-captain of the Penn men's tennis team, estimates that cheating occurs about a couple of times each match.

Over the past 50 years, Dr. Jack Ramsay has been involved at all levels of basketball. Originally a high-school coach, Ramsay moved on to his alma mater Saint Joseph's in 1955. From there he became the Philadelphia 76ers GM, and later their coach. After a four-year stop with the Buffalo Braves, he moved to Portland for the next decade, in 1977 leading the Blazers to their only NBA title.

Basketball is just a game for most, a hobby for some and a job for others. But for Penn's Anca Popovici and Drexel's Gabriela Marginean, basketball offered something more. It was a plane ticket to the U.S., a way to continue their educations and to represent their country.

Michael Jordan wore his North Carolina shorts under his Chicago Bulls uniform. Wade Boggs ate the same kind of chicken before every game. Patrick Roy talked to his goalposts because they were his "friends." And then there's Quakers lacrosse midfielder Ali DeLuca.

When the Penn softball team travels to Delaware for a doubleheader tomorrow, coach Leslie King will be banking on none of her players getting hurt. No coach wants injuries, but the Quakers are in a particularly precarious situation. At full strength, King's squad consists of 14 players.

Kym Rohn-Taylor never knew if she would have the chance to board an airplane. The Franklin Field security guard has an aversion to flying, and last year she underwent breast-cancer surgery. But now she's back at work, and later this week she'll be up in the sky, off to California.