This is the column I never wanted to write but sensed I might have to after watching Loyola take a 30-point lead against Penn at that high school gym in Baltimore. After that game, Glen Miller stressed his team's inexperience. That's when I almost wrote off this season as a rebuilding year.

There were no surprises this weekend for the men's tennis team. In a Sunday doubleheader that went pretty much as expected, the Quakers easily knocked off Delaware and Villanova by a combined score of 13-1. According to Penn coach Nik DeVore, the Quakers (7-1) started the day "flat," dropping the first doubles match to Delaware by an 8-6 margin.

Sophomore Ekaterina Kosminskaya has been as good as the Quakers could have hoped. She lost just a total of seven singles and doubles matches in the spring of her rookie campaign en route to unanimous Ivy League Rookie and Player of the Year honors. But after missing the Quakers' first two matches of 2008 with the flu, Kosminskaya had to make her season debut against a rare opponent who has had her number.

The Penn men's squash team was hoping for a fourth-place finish this weekend at the Team Championships in Boston, Mass. It'll have to settle for fifth. After a long bus ride up on Friday and little time left for practice, the Quakers took the courts to face off against Yale in their first-round match.

Down one at halftime, Penn coach Glen Miller talked about the need to come out strong in the second half. But three quick Yale layups after the break had Penn reeling, and it looked like the Quakers could fall below .500 in the Ivy League for the first time since the 2003-04 season.

"Cool. Calm. Chilled." Why does women's basketball coach Pat Knapp describe his team like that despite having lost 14 games in a row? Because Penn (3-17, 0-5 Ivy) is not the only Ivy League team struggling this season, and this weekend is its best chance yet for a win.

His brother-in-law may get the notoriety, but Brown coach Craig Robinson fancies himself an agent of change. It started in his own gym, where he morphed Glen Miller's run-and-gun system into the deliberate march of his alma mater. Now, he wants change at the top; no team other than Penn and Princeton has won the Ivy League in the past 20 years.

For Tyler Bernardini, Valentine's Day was heavy on the basketball and light on the roses. "Just working on my jump shot," the freshman guard said when asked if he had plans. "Just trying to 'ball." Of late, Bernardini has been prevented from doing just that.

Wednesday's practice for the men's squash team was just like any other - relaxed, with plenty of jokes and racquets flying around. For four seniors this week of practice at the Ringe Squash Courts will be their last. Coming up on the last hurrah of their squash careers at this weekend's College Squash Association Championship, the eldest Quakers want their departure to be memorable.

It may be the weekend, but the Penn women's tennis team has an exam on Saturday. The subject: Virginia Commonwealth, in Richmond, Va. "I think this weekend we're going to find out how we're playing," coach Mike Dowd said. "When we're playing a team of this level we're going to find out where we are as a team and what we're going to need to work on afterwards.

The Quakers seek revenge today and pray for an upset tomorrow. This afternoon, the No. 28 Quakers (11-4) will take the mat against aspiring rival Columbia. Last year the Lions upset the then-No. 16 ranked Quakers by a score of 22-12. But this time, the Lions won't have home-mat advantage, a factor that some Quakers believe played a role in last season's loss.

Since its formation in 1954, the Ivy League has been perhaps the most stable conference in Division I. It has enjoyed a remarkable level of parity and is still the only D-I league whose membership has never changed. But the distribution of financial aid money - and its effect on athletics - is threatening to upset that balance.

Five percent. That's the current intra-conference road winning percentage of Ivy League teams not named "Cornell." Brown is 0-1. Yale is 0-1. Penn is 0-2. Princeton is 0-3. Dartmouth is 0-5. Harvard is 0-5. Columbia is a real road warrior by comparison, with its relatively sparkling 1-3 record away from Levien Gymnasium.

Last season, the Harvard women's basketball team broke away from the pack to claim the conference crown by four games. This year, with the bottom three teams a combined 1-15 in Ivy play, there was bound to be a little more congestion at the top. A month into the Ancient Eight season, the defending champs find themselves in a three-way tie for first with Cornell and Dartmouth.

With its members scrambling to stay on the vanguard of financial-aid generosity, the Ivy League may do one of two things. It could keep its current model of need-based aid, or it could - theoretically - form a new one. Penn athletic director Steve Bilsky said the current model will result in a competitive imbalance.

The first Penn-Princeton affair of the year did not feature the high stakes of past meetings. Each team had a 2-2 Ivy League record coming in. But for all the talk of rebuilding, Penn has not fallen as far as Princeton. The Quakers' 70-65 victory gave them a winning mark in the Ivy League and pushed the Tigers (5-15, 2-3 Ivy) further into the conference doldrums as their slump now approaches four years.

Whether students were attempting to relive the past glory of the rivalry or hanging on to the slight hope that the Quakers could turn the season around, the Red and Blue Crew was out in full force for last night's game. "Everybody always comes out for Penn-Princeton," said senior Abraham Dauhajre, who shows up to every home game in a taco costume.