After back injuries during her sophomore year forced senior Emily Shugan to end her career as a gymnast, she has since leaped into a new role on the team: student assistant coach.

It's not that Nwokedi's impact on each game has diminished. Rather, coach Mike McLaughlin and the team have needed her to play a new role this season. And, according to McLaughin, the changes in the past few weeks have been due to her growth in that new role.

Though most programs would hesitate to refer to a two-season title hiatus as a drought, the mentality for Penn gymnastics is clear. It’s “championship-or-bust time” for the Red and Blue, and the 2018 squad is more than ready to do so.

11 years. That's how long it's been since the last time Penn men's basketball defeated Temple in 2007 — which is also the year of the Quakers' last NCAA tournament appearance. Behind the superb play of sophomores Ryan Betley and AJ Brodeur, the Quakers are confident they can take their first win over Temple in a decade.  

For the Quakers, the only starter who was not previously a fixture in the starting lineup is junior forward Max Rothschild. After averaging 13.6 minutes per game and starting three games combined in his first two seasons at Penn, Rothschild has averaged 23.9 minutes per game this season, starting all 17 games. And so far, he has validated coach Steve Donahue’s decision to increase his role.

It is clear that if the team is to reach its full potential and win the Ivy or ECAC Championship, a significant part of the credit should go to the two returning co-captains, and the attitude and togetherness they bring to the program.

After finishing last out of four teams in its first meet of the season, the Lindsey Ferris Invitational, with a relatively low score of 190.375, Penn gymnastics (1-2, 0-1 Ivy) hopes to bounce back this upcoming weekend as it travels to New Haven to take on Yale, both teams' first one-on-one Ivy League matchup in 2018.

In this week's edition of Is Stat So?, we look at several individual and team records that were broken this weekend, as well as a few key numbers that allowed men's squash and women's basketball to emerge victorious.

Following the sweeps, two stars of the Penn men’s and women’s basketball programs, sophomore forward AJ Brodeur and freshman center Eleah Parker, were named Ivy League Player of the Week for their contributions.

Just a week after freshman Andrew Douglas’ comeback win to beat No. 6 Rochester, Penn needed another ninth game win to beat Yale 5-4. Meanwhile, Penn’s women fell to the Elis by the same score. Against Brown on Sunday, both teams eliminated any chance for a dramatic ending by sweeping the Bears 9-0.  

Both Red and Blue squads struggled in their final Ivy League meet of the regular season. The Quakers’ men fell to Harvard, 181-108, while the women fell respectively to Brown and Harvard by scores of 178-119 and 197-100. 

Penn fencing had an up and down weekend against some of the top fencing programs in the country.   The Quakers (11-4 for both men and women) had a busy weekend in State College, Pa. The men and women defeated North Carolina and Haverford but fell short to Columbia, Penn State, and Duke.

A year after opening the 2017 season with an impressive second-place finish at the Lindsey Ferris Invitational, Penn gymnastics struggled to match that effort this time around, finishing in last place with a score of 190.375. 

After Penn women’s basketball lost to arch-rival Princeton last Saturday, the team rebounded spectacularly this weekend, defeating Cornell and Columbia in consecutive weekends behind the stellar play of Eleah Parker.

As great as this 3-0 conference start is, it’s not as if the Red and Blue are playing perfect basketball. Coach Steve Donahue acknowledged after the victory over Columbia that this team is still constantly trying to improve week to week and is learning how to close out basketball games. 

Sophomore forward AJ Brodeur filled up the statsheet for the Quakers (12-5, 3-0 Ivy) in Friday’s 69-61 victory against Cornell, only to come back the next night with an even better performance. In the Saturday night matchup versus Columbia, Brodeur led the Red and Blue in a tightly contested 77-71 victory.  

The Quakers started off a little slow, but outplayed Columbia for the final 35 minutes of the game en route to a largely comfortable 70-51 win. The night before, The Red and Blue took down Cornell by a score of 68-48 to sweep the New York Ivies. Against the Lions, Penn (8-5, 2-1 Ivy) was led once again by another dominant performance from freshman Eleah Parker who set a new career high with 22 points.