Brennan Votel's play in his first few games this year raised a question for coach Glen Miller: What if Votel was not the big man of the future for Penn?

It's not quite midterm season in Ivy League basketball, but it is time for a high school classic - the mid-semester progress report. We'll start from the bottom up and see who might be giving Penn a run for its money come conference play. (All stats are before last night's games).

By David bernstein Staff Writer davidkb@sas.upenn.edu Monmouth's game plan was clear: Milk the shot clock, move the ball around and get shooters open. But Penn showed the Hawks that the Princeton offense doesn't work when the game becomes a track meet.

The Quakers used an 8-0 run - including back-to-back layups by Zoller - to open a double-digit lead with 8:52 to play.

When he first took the court with his new team, Glen Miller had so many options, he didn't know who to play. Maybe that explains why he put in several freshmen for significant minutes in Penn's season-opening loss against Texas-El Paso. In last night's game against Monmouth, Miller got closer to the right track, restricting his liberal bench-playing tendencies.

Last year's game against Delaware is one that the Penn women's basketball team would rather forget. In its worst loss of the season, Penn was stifled by the Blue Hen defense, putting up only 34 points and losing by a 44 point margin. But even though it's a new year, the Quakers (2-1, 0-0 Ivy) can still expect many features of the Blue Hens to remain the same.

If a team is trying to gauge its role in the national picture, then facing the No. 12 squad in the nation can help in finding an answer. When the team also takes on the No. 1 in the nation on the same day, the question changes from 'where do we fit in?' to 'how can we fit in?' Saturday at the Journeyman/Brute Northeast Collegiate Duals, the Penn wrestling team fought to a 2-2 record.

When Monmouth steps onto the Palestra floor tonight, there will be a few things Penn isn't used to seeing.

Everything about John Bunch is larger than life. At 7-foot-2, 320 pounds, the Monmouth center is of superhuman size and has shown a knack for superhuman feats. While playing his first two collegiate years at Lincoln, in Chester County, Bunch set an NCAA all-division record with 18 blocks in a December 2004 game against Valley Forge Christian.

Everything about John Bunch is larger than life. At 7-foot-2, 320 pounds, the Monmouth center is of superhuman size and has shown a knack for superhuman feats. While playing his first two collegiate years at Lincoln, in Chester County, Bunch set an NCAA all-division record with 18 blocks in a December 2004 game against Valley Forge Christian.

Instead of stressing over a few extra holiday pounds, grab your sweats and head over to the blistering Pottruck wrestling room, where wrestlers can drop 10 pounds in a single two-hour practice.

Freshman Kristen Lange proved this weekend that age has little effect on outcome in squash. The freshman advanced all the way to the finals at the Constable Invitational this weekend, climbing Princeton's ladder in the process - starting with Casey Riley and ending with Princeton's No.

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.