Ian Wenik

“No.” Penn women’s soccer coach Darren Ambrose didn’t have much to say to me when I asked him what changed in the second half of his team’s 8-0 win over NJIT, the first game I ever covered (they only scored three goals in the final 45 minutes).

When you’re told to “expect the unexpected,” it’s easy to take that clichéd piece of advice with a desultory wave of the hand. But let’s be honest.

One week after splitting up to opposite coasts for the Florida Relays, Sam Howell Invitational and Stanford Invitational, the Red and Blue will be competing as one unit at this weekend’s George Mason Invitational in Fairfax, Va., albeit without a number of key contributors.

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.

The madness of the NHL Trade Deadline in Philadelphia, which passed at 3:00 p.m. on Monday, did not limit itself to the Flyers’ offices at the Wells Fargo Center. It touched Penn’s campus as well. After scheduling quirks forced the Calgary Flames away from the usual venue in which teams visiting the Flyers practice and to Penn, a pair of the squad’s sessions at the University’s Class of 1923 Arena quickly verged into the surreal as the team’s management wheeled and dealed earlier this week. On Sunday, the Flyers hosted their annual Flyers Wives’ Carnival, a massive charity event that took up the entire floor at the Wells Fargo Center and featured a Ferris wheel that fit inside the building by — quite literally — an inch.

Already written off as bound for last place in the Ivy League, Penn basketball came oh-so-close to pulling off an upset on Yale that would have sent the conference into chaos.

Staring at the ultimate humiliation of a 20+ point loss to Brown, Penn basketball relied on an unlikely group of characters to give itself a chance. It still wasn’t enough.

For Penn sprint football, Eric Furda is something more than the Dean of Admissions.

Penn basketball — like most of Brown’s opponents — thought it could beat the Bears by limiting their powerful forwards, Rafael Maia and Cedric Kuakumensah. JR Hobbie begged to differ.

What’s the cure for a hangover? Penn basketball is in  need of some relief after following up big Friday victories on its first two Ivy weekends of the season with equally deflating losses the day after. The Quakers (7-12, 3-6 Ivy) will take a crack at finding a cure on their own floor when they host Yale and Brown for a back-to-back at the Palestra. Last Friday, the Quakers took advantage of a second-half rally to stun Cornell in Ithaca, winning, 71-69, on a floater by junior guard Tony Hicks with only four seconds left. Saturday, though, Hicks and pretty much all of his teammates — save for freshman forward Sam Jones — went MIA.