When you've won 24 Ivy League titles and reign as the back-to-back conference champion, you're used to teams coming after you with their best shot. For the Quakers, perhaps nobody plays with that attitude more than the Yale team they'll face tomorrow night.

The start of the Ivy season has the potential to serve as redemption for a disappointed bunch. After a vicious rout at the hands of No. 6 Hofstra, the Penn wrestlers look to rebound this weekend with a slate of four matches at the Palestra. The Pride came to Philadelphia last Saturday and proved they deserve their top five ranking.

There's nothing like rushing into the season. After its first match against Saint Joseph's on Wednesday, the men's tennis team will play two more this weekend, beginning with Central Flordia tonight. Last season, Penn coach Mark Riley and his team were able to pull out a 4-3 victory over host Central Florida, a matchup that will be played at Levy Pavillion this year.

With an increase in points in each of its first three meets, the Penn gymnastics team has been getting better and better. The team's once-biggest obstacle of youth and inexperience has turned out to be its biggest strength, with freshman Marissa Rosen leading the team in almost every category and with steady improvement throughout the whole team.

Philadelphia Big 5 play is over for the Quakers, but Ivy League play is just heating up. The Penn women (6-10, 1-2 Ivy) are gearing up for the bulk of in-conference hoops, which begins tonight when the Red and Blue host Brown (3-15, 1-3) at the Palestra, and continues on Saturday as Yale (10-8, 3-1) visits the Quakers at 7 p.

As anyone from Providence, R.I. can tell you, Brown's Mark McAndrew has basketball in his genes. Just a few months ago, McAndrew's 11 points helped the Bears upset Providence, their Big East, in-state rival, for the first time since 2001. And for McAndrew's biggest supporter - his father, who is also named Mark - the win was bittersweet.

Although they're both finished with league play, the Penn swim teams both face one last challenge before the conference championship meets when they travel to Division II West Chester today. For the Penn men's team (6-7), the focus will be on the races between local swimmers - including the ones between Penn junior Pat Gallagher and West Chester junior Bill Marcum.

By Ashley Humienny Staff Writer humienny@sas.upenn.edu Last week's personal best wasn't enough for Tim Kaijala. At the Penn State National Invitational, Kaijala won the 1000 meters, setting a new personal best in the process. This weekend at the Giegengack Invitational, though, he will be looking for success in a different event.

It might not have rivaled The Line, but at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday an unmistakable sight appeared outside of the Palestra. Ninety minutes before the Penn men's basketball team tipped off against Saint Joseph's - and 30 minutes before the gates opened - fans were lined up, braving the cold as they waited to get inside.

PRINCETON, N.J., Jan. 31 - Twenty-four hours ago - before their match against Princeton - the Quakers were in both an enviable and precarious position. They were the No. 1 women's squah team in the country with only three matches left. But that meant that if they lost, they'd have only two matches to try to regain the top spot.

There are many words you could use to describe Yale's John J. Lee Amphitheater, home of the Elis basketball team. Historic. Cozy. Church-like. If you're a Penn basketball player, you might have some other words to describe it, few of which are suitable to be printed in this newspaper.

It was a different team, with the same result. After being handed a 9-0 decision last weekend against No.1 Trinity, the men's squash team fell in the same manner yesterday evening against No. 3 Princeton. "All the guys are pretty disappointed; they could have come out a little better," head coach Craig Thorpe-Clark said of the match.

Jason Pinsky saw this one coming. After all, his Quakers shut out cross-city rival Saint Joseph's 7-0 last year. And the year before. The men's tennis team broke the ice on its spring season yesterday, shutting out the Hawks inside the Levy Tennis Pavilion and putting an early exclamation point on a campaign to break into the NCAA Tournament.

Casey Hughes has spent all of his 21 years in New Haven, Conn., but he has led two different lives. After growing up in Newhallville, a poor area of the city, he was heavily recruited by Yale, and is now a starting swingman for its basketball team. It may seem unremarkable at first glance, but Hughes is the first person in almost 25 years to do this.

In a local rivalry, it's normal to see some familiar faces on the opposite side of the net. But for Penn's Jonathan Boym and St. Joseph's Chris Chirico, the familiarity extends beyond the court. Boym and Chirico, who will face off in the second singles match, were former teammates on the International Junior circuit and even shared a room during trips to places such as Brazil.

Though the Penn women's squash team is ranked No. 1, coach Jack Wyant isn't finding it lonely at the top. On Sunday, his team defeated No. 3 Trinity 6-3, with all of the losses coming at the top three flights.

Glen Miller may still be the new kid on the block in the Big 5, but his navigation around Philadelphia's most athletic and talented teams was more like that of a seasoned veteran. Saint Joseph's coach Phil Martelli was impressed by Penn's offensive schemes on Saturday night, saying that he "would like to one day coach offense the way Glen Miller has been able to coach offense with that team.