As the team’s season gets underway, it is unclear whether it will be the talented freshman class or the veterans on the team — or some combination of the two — that will fill a part of the void left by Brendan McHugh’s graduation.

The Penn basketball season has already tipped off, and with it the annual tradition of students waiting to buy season tickets at The Line has come and gone. But for most students, this historic tradition went by largely unnoticed.

Starting kicker Connor Loftus and starting punter and holder Scott Lopano like to have fun while they are waiting for their turn on the gridiron. But when they’ve gotten on the field this season, they have done a near-flawless job.

While it’s understandable for coach Jerome Allen to be frustrated by two losses in as many day, the improvement Fran Dougherty has made since last season is something the coach has to be pleased with, if he’ll admit to it or not.

Penn fell to Fairfield 62-53 in a game in which the Quakers again failed to spread the wealth offensively. Fran Dougherty led the way for Penn with 31 points.

It’s hard to land a punch when every swing is aimless. That’s what the Penn men’s basketball team found out Monday night in its 84-69 loss to Delaware as the Quakers hacked, hacked, hacked away to the tune of 31 fouls. If there was a triple bonus, Delaware would have been in it.

Though the Quakers lost a heartbreaker at home Monday night, 68-65, Penn had a 12-point lead over the Cavaliers at the half and went up by 15 to open the second frame. However, Virginia chipped away at the deficit throughout the half and hung on to win.

Not counting the upcoming Keystone Classic and Midlands Championships, Penn’s wrestling team will take part in 13 duals this season before the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association Championships in early March.

Leading up to the de facto Ivy championship tilt against Harvard, I still didn’t give the post-Yale Quakers much of a chance. But boy, did they prove me wrong.

Fouls were the theme in Penn basketball’s dismal loss to Delaware in the opening round of the NIT Season Tip-Off.

When the last swimmer’s hand had touched the wall, both the men’s and women’s teams had asserted their dominance over UConn on Saturday, taking both meets from the Huskies. The victory came on the heels of a tough men’s loss Friday at Columbia.

On Saturday, Penn men’s soccer picked up its first Ivy win of the year, defeating Harvard at Rhodes Field, 3-1. In doing so, the Quakers (3-13, 1-6 Ivy) avoided finishing in the cellar of the Ivy League, a status they relegated to the Crimson (3-11-3, 0-6-1) instead.

The women cruised through the matches with 8-1 and 7-2 wins against Cornell and Yale, respectively, and an impressive 6-3 victory against preseason No. 1 Harvard. Meanwhile, the men defeated Columbia, 5-4, and Dartmouth, 5-4, but fell to Cornell, 7-2.

The last time the teams faced off, the Red and Blue swept both opponents. This time around, Penn (13-12, 8-6 Ivy) lost to both Columbia (13-9, 8-5) on Friday and Cornell (9-16, 5-9) on Saturday.

The Penn men’s and women’s cross country seasons came to an end Friday at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional Championships, with a number of strong performances from underclassmen giving the team optimism for the future.

It happened on the final play of the third quarter. Penn, up 21-14 at the time, faced a crucial third down with three yards to go on the Harvard 36. Ragone, as he had already done 15 times that afternoon, tucked the football away and took off running. He scrambled seven yards — easily enough for the first — before he was brought down violently around the neck by the Crimson’s Nnamdi Obukwelu.

On Saturday, the Penn football team showed what it could do and then some, clinching at least a share of the Ancient Eight crown with a victory over a favored Crimson squad.