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.

So, you guys are probably gonna beat us tonight. We're 1-5 in the Ivies. We lost to Dartmouth Saturday night. Yeah, that Dartmouth. But it's not like we couldn't beat you guys if we wanted to. We've done it in the past, time and time again. But this season, we're looking at the bigger picture.

There were plenty of obstacles that freshman Marcus Schroeder had to hurdle to find his way into a Princeton uniform and the starting lineup. There was the geographic divide that the Concord, Calif.

Whoa there, Princeton. Just take a deep breath. You see, the same thing seems to happen every year with us. When confronted with the sad realities about your basketball program, you throw a hissy fit. You try to say you're better than us, that Penn stinks, and that we took your lunch money when you were little kids.

For the second time in three years, a strange sight will appear at the Palestra. One of the two best teams in Ivy League history is in its proper place at the top of the conference standings. Penn (14-8) is in first place at 5-1. But archrival Princeton (10-10), as it was two years ago, comes limping into tonight's 7 p.

Last Friday against Harvard, Penn's leading scorer was held to four points in 30 minutes on 2-of-11 shooting. But coach Pat Knapp saw a bigger problem. "That's not the story of the weekend," he said when asked about Monica Naltner's season-low output. "The story of the weekend is how poorly we defended, particularly on the perimeter.

Charge and retreat. Advance and regress. These words were used more than just to describe the heated action on the fencing strip, but could also trace out Penn men's and women's fencing teams this season. Yesterday at the Ivy League Round Robin No. 1, both were charging.

Consecutive 9-0 losses to the nation's top two teams were major setbacks in the Quakers' quest to be considered among the nation's elite. But now, No. 4 men's squash can say it's in the ballpark. Penn split the weekend's matches at Ringe Courts, losing to No.

Penn may have finished off a weekend sweep with Saturday night's 67-53 victory over visiting Harvard, but it wasn't one-sided. The Crimson walked away with a better three-point showing, shutting down the Penn players who shot from beyond the arc. All but one.