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.

The Penn men's squash team knows not to let a shutout get to them - especially at the hands of a team with a 156-match winning streak. The Quakers have not hit many bumps this season, accruing a record of 7-1. But even after a shutout at the hands of No. 1 Trinity, high expectations are set for Penn's rivalry match against No.

The Princeton basketball team has pulled off an amazing statistical feat: they are first in the country in scoring defense and last in scoring offense. Despite their 9-7 record, I believe Joe Scott is doing his team a disservice with his coaching scheme. When Scott came to Princeton three years ago, he restored the Princeton offense to its unadulterated form.

Yasser El-Halaby wowed the squash world the last four years on his way to four straight individual titles - a feat never accomplished before. However, El-Halaby was just one part of a recent tradition of exceptional international squash players. A United States-born player has not won an individual title in over 15 years.

Despite finishing 18-6 overall and capturing a share of the Ivy League title in 2006, this squad remains hungry for more.

Ivy League basketball players ought to relax over the next few days, because this upcoming weekend marks the beginning of the trademark back-to-backs that run until season's end. But this past weekend the Ancient Eight was fairly busy, with seven of eight squads in action on Saturday alone.

Aside from the odd Ivy Leaguer drafted into the NFL, the Ancient Eight usually garners little national attention when it comes to big-market athletics. It is, after all, a conference ineligible for postseason play in football (even in Division I-AA), and one that never sends more than its single guaranteed team to the NCAA Tournament in basketball.

Although it took nearly 20 minutes of basketball for Saint Joseph's to suck the drama out of its 84-74 win over Penn on Saturday, three momentum-changing plays can really tell the whole story. The Quakers had closed to within five at 54-49 around the midway point of the half, and Ahmad Nivins threw up one of just three misses of the day.

Looking back through The Daily Pennsylvanian's archives, it's pretty easy to spot a pattern in the paper's sports columns: Every few months, some writer pens a lengthy piece begging the student body to support Penn's teams beyond basketball and football. Let's be honest - nobody really listens.