The number 20 was plastered all over the Palestra Tuesday afternoon for the introductory press conference of new basketball coach Steve Donahue. It was proudly emblazoned on the Penn jersey that adorned the podium on the dais.

I should start by coming clean: Baseball is my favorite sport.

There’s no place like home. Penn basketball has been desperately searching for a victory for exactly a month now, losing five straight games on the road with only a brief return to the Palestra in mid-February.

A couple months ago, at the beginning of the season, Penn’s underclassmen bore a striking resemblance to wannabe New Yorkers.

Penn women’s lacrosse has been perched atop the Ivy League throne for so long that it’s the only view any player on the current roster has known in her collegiate career. It’s mindboggling to look at the Quakers’ continued string of success.

Well, this is getting pretty familiar. On a snowy Boston night at a sold-out Lavietes Pavillion, the Quakers were handed another humbling loss by Harvard, a 69-46 defeat that emphasized just how far Penn is from the Ancient Eight’s top tier. It was the fourth consecutive loss for the Quakers, with each defeat coming by at least 16 points.

Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel once said that the opposite of love was not hate, but indifference.

That was ugly... I mean really ugly. There were no redeeming qualities for Penn basketball’s blowout loss at home against Harvard.

It means that with the game on the line and Alex Mitola in possession of the ball, it wasn’t Dartmouth celebrating a win: It was Penn and that’s something to hang your hat on, at least for one day.

Football and men’s basketball. Men’s basketball and football. Men’s basketball. Football.

Take a step back into the world of 1990’s rap, if you will, and pause to consider Penn coach Jerome Allen surveying the state of his team with a withering look somewhat akin to the gaze of the Nurse Ratched figure in Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady” video. “I don’t really know where we’re at,” he said when asked to describe his team’s progress following last night’s 82-67 loss to La Salle.

About a half-hour before one of Penn basketball’s typical Tuesday evening practices, assistant coach Ira Bowman was counting out Greg Louis — literally.

When was the last time you heard of a Penn athlete who achieved national celebrity status? For most current Penn students, the answer to this question is probably “never.” This is not necessarily a problem of student apathy towards Penn athletics, however, but rather a reflection of Penn’s priorities as a university.

This season, the two schools will tip off for the 231st and 232nd time in the historic matchup on dates that are inconvenient for the majority of Penn’s student body. But that is this year. It absolutely shouldn’t become a trend, especially if you want students to be engaged with the best of Penn traditions.

Now that it is about to wrap up, what can we say about Grace Calhoun’s first semester as Penn’s athletic director? One thing is for sure: is is moving in the right direction toward addressing student apathy.

No matter what Penn basketball accomplishes -- or doesn't accomplish -- this year, every single narrative surrounding the program will tie into the degree of proverbial heat underneath the chair of a certain coach in his fifth full season.

But say what you want about the lack of titles — Penn Athletics has plenty to learn from and build off of the fall that was.