Penn women's basketball coach Pat Knapp knew that defense was the key to stopping La Salle's Crista Ricketts. As it turned out, merely good defense wasn't enough, as the Explorers came away with a deserved 73-63 win over the Quakers at the Palestra. "She gets too many calls," Knapp said of the Explorers' star forward, adding that defenders need only to "breathe on her" to be called for a foul.

As wrestling coach Zeke Jones put it, the Quakers will be spending Thanksgiving "training and eating turkey" as they prepare to take on some of the nation's top teams this weekend. Coming off of a second-place finish at the Keystone Classic last Sunday, No.

When asked if he had heard that some had picked his team as the underdog, Ibrahim Jaaber chuckled, saying, "We were what? That's the first time I've heard about it." And, after seeing what playing in the Palestra does to the Dragons year after year, he had no reason to listen to the critics this time.

It was the last thing Dominick Mejia was expecting to hear. Just three minutes into Drexel's matchup with Penn last night, Dragons coach Bruiser Flint got in the face of his star player. "Get the ball!" he said after the 6-foot-5 swingman coughed it up on Drexel's first possession.

Quakers women's basketball coach Pat Knapp knew that, aside from Penn or La Salle's usual offensive standouts, either squad would need another player to step up to ensure a victory. And he was exactly right - La Salle sophomore Tara Lapetina scored a career-high 20 points to help lift the Explorers to victory.

Even though it is not a member of the Philadelphia Big 5, Drexel and Penn played a classic Big 5-style game last night at the Palestra.

Much of the focus during Penn's meet against La Salle last night was on one race, a showdown between each team's top swimmer - and former club teammates, to boot - in the 200-yard freestyle. La Salle's Sean Connors-McBride edged out Penn junior Pat Gallagher by .

Glen Miller may be a newcomer to the Big 5, but the "other" bastion of Philadelphia college hoops is giving him plenty to worry about. With a 97-74 whooping of Division II Florida Gulf Coast still fresh in their minds, Miller's Quakers (2-2) tip off tonight against Drexel (2-0), a team now on the rise after showing only intermittent brilliance last year.

At yesterday's NWCA All-Star Classic, fans witnessed a tale of two Matts. The invitational, which hosts nationally top-ranked wrestlers in each weight class annually, featured two Quakers for the first time. Matt Valenti, last year's NCAA national champion and top-ranked wrestler in the country at 133 pounds, faced Oklahoma State's No.

When the Penn swimming teams take on La Salle tonight, the women's team (3-2, 1-2 Ivy) will expect a win while the men's team (2-3, 0-3) will look forward to a close meet.

It was one of the first things I learned in my time at the DP: Be careful of criticizing athletes in the newspaper. They're amateur athletes, and, in the Ivy League, they're non-scholarship athletes, doing what they do for the love of the game. But this past weekend, an athlete at Penn made a pair of mental mistakes so bad in such a clutch situation that the guideline has to go out the window.

The Ivy League player of the week and the Atlantic 10 and Big 5 player of the week will face off against each other when Penn (2-0) takes on La Salle (2-0) in its third game and first Big Five contest of the season.

A huge part of the allure of college basketball is the opportunity for players to display their talent on a national stage and go up against the best in the country. That's what guard Dominick Mejia intended to do when he went to NC State in 2002, and he finally did last year when he lit up Duke for 25 points in a near-upset.

The Quakers men's basketball team posted a solid 68-49 win over Drexel tonight at the Palestra. Strong defense on both sides led to a multutude of turnovers for each team, but the Quakers were able to pull away early in the second half, and never trailed in the game.

When you enter the Palestra and look above the east basket, you see flags representing the Big 5 schools. While Penn has created great rivalries with Villanova, Saint Joseph's, Temple and La Salle, it is the Philadelphia school without a flag that Penn should have its greatest rivalry with.

In a tight contest between two of the Ivy League's best teams, it was the freshmen for both Penn and Princeton who had the greatest impact. The Penn women lost in a surprisingly close meet to the 25th-ranked Tigers, 157-138, but easily defeated Cornell, 234-66, Saturday in Ithaca, N.

It was a miracle on 33rd Street yesterday for the Weenies of The Daily Pennsylvanian. The non-sports staff defeated a clearly superior DPOSTM squad 14-7 in a highly controversial game at Franklin Field in the 122nd Annual Kamin Cup. The estimated crowd of three people and two bicycles witnessed the spectacle, as the Weenies' travesty of a team featured only Photo and Street ringers and failed to have a girl on the field at all times, a flagrant violation of Cup rules.