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.

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.

Penn women’s basketball put the rest of the Ivy League on notice with Friday’s 68-48 home victory against Cornell. The Quakers, while not playing a perfect game, took a step in the right direction with their first Ivy victory of the young season. 

From the opening tip — which Penn won and led to senior Lauren Whitlatch’s first three — the Quakers dominated Cornell physically all over the court on the way to a 68-48 win. 

The absence of the Brown's men's swimming from the meet on Jan. 13 will change the approach that the Quakers plan to take in deciding this weekend’s lineups.  

On Thursday, Penn Athletics introduced a new series of game day enhancements, including a limited amount of free student tickets, that will debut at Penn men’s and women’s basketball’s doubleheader with Cornell this Friday at the Palestra. The news comes a day after Penn Athletics announced a new partnership with Uber that will provide Penn students with free uberPOOL rides to and from the Palestra for select men’s basketball games.

Eleah Parker seems to have gotten over the first-year jitters, as she has grown into one of the premier scoring options for the Red and Blue. Over the past seven games, the rookie center leads the team with 13.7 points per game, garnering double digit points in each game and three Ivy Rookie of the Week awards in the process.

To open the season, the gymnastics team is traveling to Washington, D.C. on Saturday, where the Quakers will face Cornell and George Washington in the Lindsey Ferris Invitational. Cornell is an Ivy rival and GW is a top-25 ranked team, but for team captain Kyra Levi, it doesn’t matter who the Quakers are up against.

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Is Stat So?, a compilation of some of the most interesting stats to come out of Penn Athletics from the week. Each week, we'll highlight a few different numbers that go beyond the box score, and give deeper insight behind Penn's biggest wins and losses.

If the Quakers have all of their best athletes on the floor, we think the Red and Blue men will drive home as tournament champions. As for the women, closing the gap with Columbia might be a tall task, not to mention that the women have a harder field because Temple does not have a men’s team. But still, we expect the Quakers to improve on last year’s effort with a second-place finish here.

Both the men’s and women’s teams experienced an inconsistent meet, picking up wins against host Dartmouth, 249-104 and 235-118 respectively, but suffering big losses to Yale, 123-230 and 80-273 respectively.

In its Ivy opener, Penn women's basketball fell to Princeton, 70-55. The Quakers (6-5, 0-1 Ivy) struggled offensively, while Princeton (11-3, 1-0), behind strong performances from junior Gabrielle Rush, sophomore Bella Alarie, and senior Leslie Robinson, proved too much for the Red and Blue to handle. Here are some takeaways from the game.

On Saturday, Penn women’s basketball fell to Princeton, 70-55 at the Palestra. The Quakers shot just 33 percent from the field, while the Tigers connected on 24 out of 51 of their shots, including 8 of 21 from three. 

2017 is over, but at least one thing isn’t changing in the new year. On Monday, Penn women’s basketball freshman center Eleah Parker was named Ivy League Rookie of the Week for a third straight week.

The win captured the NJIT Highlanders Christmas Tournament for the Quakers (6-4), who outscored opponents 159-90 across the two-game competition. Both games set new season records for margin of victory, and Parker earned tournament MVP honors.