This is just the way it was supposed to happen for Penn's seniors. On their home floor, Ibrahim Jaaber, Mark Zoller and Stephen Danley led the Quakers to an 86-58 victory over Yale last night to clinch a third straight Ivy League title and NCAA Tournament berth, and avenge their lone conference blemish of the season, a nine-point loss in New Haven a month ago.

It might only be a week into the 2007 campaign, but the Penn women's lacrosse team will have an opportunity to make national headlines. The squad will travel to Evanston, Ill. to take on the two-time defending national champions, No.

Kiss that 15-seed goodbye. The 2007 men's basketball team did what last season's Ivy champion squad couldn't - close out the season with a win against Princeton. It dropped Penn's r‚sum‚ enough to eventually make a date with powerhouse Texas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Brown coach Craig Robinson is a glutton for pain. He spent four years as a player at Princeton getting heckled by the rabid fans of the Palestra and went 1-3 in his four games there.

Thanks to Yale's epic collapse at home, the only league games that matter will take place at the Palestra this weekend. But that doesn't mean the action stops. Six Ivy schools' schedules end on Saturday night, two of which are fighting to hit .500. Meanwhile, one other team (not to name names, but it ends in "-inceton") is desperately hoping to pull out of dead last.

There is no Ivy League championship glistening at the end of the tunnel, but Penn women's basketball coach Pat Knapp and his team couldn't care less. When the squad heads north this weekend, it is hungrily seeking to repeat its Yale-Brown sweep of last month.

Brian Voelker must now do more with less. Voelker, in his fifth year coaching Penn lacrosse, counted on veterans on defense to carry the Quakers. But after seeing that unit get outmuscled on Wednesday in a tight 13-12 win over Lehigh, he thinks that the key might lie in playing smarter, not harder.

When Penn (19-8, 10-1 Ivy) hosts Yale (13-12, 9-3) tonight, it will be a de facto championship game - even if Penn has a one-and-a-half-game cushion.

Casey Hughes boasts the best slams on the Yale basketball team, but Sam Kaplan has the hottest dunks. Whether it's his Jordans, Air Force Ones or Nike Dunks, Kaplan has wowed his friends and teammates with a massive shoe collection. The senior swingman from Worcester, Mass.

If this weekend's IC4A and ECAC Championships are just "icing on the cake" - as coach Charlie Powell of the men's track team put it - then a trip to Arkansas for the NCAA Championships would be the post-dessert brandy and cigar. Both the men and women's track and field teams will be headed up to Boston to begin their spr ing breaks, and several Quakers are hoping that Beantown won't be the extent of their travels.

Joe DiMaggio once said of opening day: "You look forward to it like a birthday party when you're a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen." The Quakers begin their season tomorrow with the first of eight games in Boca Raton, Fla., and they hope that some wonders are in their future.

Playing 10 games in only a six-day span, the Penn softball team will be hitting its midseason stride by the time the rest of school returns from spring break. During their stint in Orlando, Fla. for the Rebel Spring Games, the Quakers will see five doubleheaders through Friday.

Approaching the EIWA Championships this weekend, maybe all the wrestling team needs is a few words of inspiration from its former leader. Roger Reina, who led the Quakers for 19 years before retiring in 2005, made an appearance at practice this week to speak to the team about how to approach the tournament, held at East Stroudsburg.

For the second year in a row, Penn will be facing a Big 12 power from the Lonestar State. The game will take place in Lexington, Ky. on Thursday afternoon. If Penn wins, it will face either No. 6 Louisville or No. 11 Stanford. Tottering between a 13 and a 14 seed, Penn emerged on the lower end and must now contend with an Aggies team that went 25-6 during the regular season but lost two of its final three games, all in conference play.

Too bad Penn's first win in a month had to be tainted by bad tennis etiquette. Following a 7-0 shutout of Drexel (1-3), sophomore Jonathan Boym, neglected to shake opponent Omar Laalej's hand after Boym won a heated 7-6, 6-4 battle until his coach Mark Riley forced him to return to the court.

On national television, Brown junior guard Damon Huffman contributed little in his 12 minutes against Michigan State. He made one field goal and tallied three steals. Huffman then missed the next seven games due to a knee injury. The Bears (10-17, 5-7 Ivy) went 3-4 during that period without Huffman.

Men's golf coach Rob Powelson isn't shy about how his team stacks up to the competition. "I don't think there is another Ivy League program that works as hard as we do in the offseason," Powelson said. The Quakers are coming off an impressive fall season in which they came in second in the Big 5 Classic and came in second place in two other tournaments.