In what was surely a must win for the Quakers, they did just that. On Friday night within the safe confines of the Palestra, Penn routed Columbia in a 71-51 showing.

NEW YORK – Midway through the second half on Friday, despite having gone down by 11 after halftime, Penn basketball managed to whittle its deficit against Columbia down to a single point. That’s as close as the Quakers would get.

After a busy season filled with plenty of ups and even a few downs, the Penn squash teams will end their regular season schedules with red and blue opponents of their own. On Friday, both second-ranked squads will have their final home match of the season against Columbia at the Ringe Squash Courts.

Things seem to be falling into place this weekend for Penn men’s tennis.

Panthers and Tigers and Bears, oh my! That's what the Penn gymnastics team will be facing this Friday at the Shelli Calloway Invitational in Towson, Maryland, as the team will compete against Towson, Pitt and Ursinus.

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

Penn (16-3, 5-0 Ivy) will host Columbia (12-9, 1-5) on Friday night before welcoming Cornell (13-7, 5-1) to the Palestra on Saturday. The first-place Quakers will be taking on both their closest and most distant competition in the second-place Big Red and the last-place Lions.

It’s a Tuesday night game at Villanova for Penn women’s basketball. At tipoff, in the first chair on the bench, senior captain Keiera Ray intently watches a contest that she won’t be able to enter. Donning her Penn sweats, she is still one of the players. And with clipboard in hand, she is now one of the coaches as well.

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.

If it seems like Penn women’s basketball is playing a slightly different game this year, that’s because they are.

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?

When I, a freshman associate sports editor, was asked to pack my bags and travel to New Hampshire to cover the presidential primary, I was taken aback.

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.

Cliched or not, practice makes perfect. Just ask Marie Stephan. From the start of the 2014-2015 season, the sophomore has won 25 regular season matches without dropping a single one.

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.