Penn Quakers

The Penn Quakers will open their defense of the Ivy League basketball title with a pair of games this weekend at the Palestra. The Quakers will meet Harvard tonight and Dartmouth on Saturday, both at 7 p.m. The Quakers registered a 22-7 season last year, were undefeated in the Ivy League, and won a bid to the NCAA tournament. They are off to a great start this season with a 7-1 record, including victories over Southern California, Washington and Georgia. They are led by forward Shawn Trice and guards Matt Maloney and Jerome Allen.

The Penn football team stepped out of the Ivy League Saturday night and made the most of the occasion. Facing Fordham of the Patriot League, the Quakers took an early lead and then withstood a rally by the Rams before completing a 35-20 victory at Franklin Field. In winning its 16th straight October game, Penn improved to 2-2 while defeating Fordham (1-4) for the fifth time in as many meetings. Up by four points at the break, Penn reached the end zone twice in the third period to take a commanding, 28-10 advantage.

Over cold beers in warm taverns on Saturday evenings, flush from yet another Quakers victory, the argument might arise among old grads about just when it was that this football renaissance began at the University of Pennsylvania. There are those who will insist that the Quakers shed the snake's skin of a loser that September day against Dartmouth in 1982, when they shut out the Big Green, 21-0. It was the first time the Quakers had defeated Dartmouth since 1977. It was the first time they had won a game on the road since 1976.

Augmented by a season-high performance from three-point range, Penn eased whatever apprehension coach Glen Miller expected in his return to Brown's Pizzitola Center last night. The Quakers connected on 60 percent (12 of 20) of their shots from beyond the arc in a convincing, 77-61 victory over the struggling Bears. Penn received double-digit points from Mark Zoller with 18, Brian Grandieri (17), Tommy McMahon (15) and Ibrahim Jaaber (12). The Quakers' uncharacteristic perimeter game was complemented with an equally impressive showing in the offensive-rebound department, as the visitors finished with 16 offensive boards to the Bears' four.

Drexel coach Bruiser Flint had for years been lobbying his counterparts in the City Six to come play the Dragons on their home court. Yesterday, Flint got his wish when their neighborhood rival, Penn, visited the Daskalakis Athletic Center for a nationally televised contest at 10 a.m. that was included in ESPN's College Hoops Tip-Off Marathon. "My boss told me, 'Look, we have the game here; now we've got to win,' " said Flint, whose team played its opener before a crowd of 2,434.

Of all the questions floating over the Penn Quakers at the start of the season, perhaps the one weighing heaviest on Al Bagnoli's mind tipped the scales at two-thirds of a ton. The Quakers' offensive line was a mystery. Only two starters returned from the previous year. The three other starters were seniors who hadn't played much. Then there was the new system - the new plays, the new terminology - being introduced by Bagnoli, the new coach. "It's really difficult to say whether we had any realistic goals," Bagnoli said yesterday, "besides trying to get those kids to play hard and try to execute what we wanted done.

On the night after they clinched their second consecutive Ivy League championship, the Penn Quakers needed overtime to beat Brown, 74-68, last night at the Pizzitola Sports Center. The Quakers (20-7, 12-1 league) trailed almost the entire way, but they got a big performance out of Eric Osmundson in the second half. Osmundson hit five three-pointers - all in the second half and overtime - and delivered five assists. Mark Zoller scored 17 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, while Brian Grandieri added 13 points, 8 rebounds and 4 steals.

Lafayette's basketball program, whose team finished 2-25 this season, hopes to steal a little magic from the NCAA-tournament-bound Penn Quakers. The Leopards yesterday named Penn assistant Fran O'Hanlon as their new head coach. O'Hanlon was in demand. He interviewed last week for the coaching job at Florida International, and was a finalist there. He said yesterday that Lafayette, which is in Easton, Pa., and is a member of the Patriot League, seemed like the better choice. O'Hanlon was Penn coach Fran Dunphy's top assistant during Dunphy's six- year run with the Quakers.

Al Bagnoli knows there will be a lot of emotion flowing today at Columbia when his Penn Quakers take the field five days after the suicide of a teammate, running back Kyle Ambrogi. The Penn coach is not going to be demanding extra brainpower from his players, who were not available to reporters this week. "We've had to be smart," Bagnoli said earlier this week. "We're not going to be anywhere near as complex as we have been. That goes back to the limited practice time, the focus factor, the retention factor.

  Philadelphia police arrested a former University of Pennsylvania football player and mixed-martial-arts trainer and seized $1.2 million worth of high-grade marijuana from his fight-training studio in University City Wednesday night, authorities said. Travis Roesler, 27, who operates Babylon Studios in a two-level brick building behind the 4100 block of Spruce Street, was arrested on the street earlier in the day, Capt. James Kelly of Narcotics South said. Police served a search warrant at his studios around 7 p.m. Police found a small but sophisticated hydroponic grow room on the second floor above the studio that contained about 130 plants and two pounds of marijuana ready to be packaged, Kelly said.

LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J. - Penn has arguably the best backcourt in Philadelphia, and the tandem of Miles Cartwright and Zack Rosen showed why on Thursday night. Cartwright scored a career-high 27 points, and Rosen had all 19 of his points after halftime to lead Penn to a 78-72 overtime victory over Rider at Alumni Gymnasium. It was a game full of missed shots, sloppy turnovers and fouls, and the Penn Quakers lost three centers to disqualification. But, there was enough stellar play mixed in, much of it by Cartwright and Rosen, to help Penn improve to 2-1. After tying the game with a driving layup with 37 seconds left in regulation, Cartwright tallied the Quakers' first five points of overtime, including an acrobatic layup on a three-point play that put Penn up 64-62 with 3 minutes, 54 seconds left.

The wheels still rolled smoothly over the asphalt in that same familiar fashion, but something was different. It wasn't the duration of the bus ride or the poor weather they navigated through. They have encountered all of that before. Instead, it was the noise. Or, rather, the lack thereof. For the first time since 2007, the Penn Quakers' bus ride home was silent. The usual joking that had become part of their road trips was absent. Instead, after a 6-0 loss at Brown on Saturday, the Quakers had five-plus hours to reflect on their first road loss since November 2007.

The Penn football team stepped out of the Ivy League Saturday night and made the most of the occasion. Facing Fordham of the Patriot League, the Quakers took an early lead and then withstood a rally by the Rams before completing a 35-20 victory at Franklin Field. In winning its 16th straight October game, Penn improved to 2-2 while defeating Fordham (1-4) for the fifth time in as many meetings. Up by four points at the break, Penn reached the end zone twice in the third period to take a commanding, 28-10 advantage.

THE FIRST Ivy League football champion (Yale) was officially crowned in 1956. Since then only one team has won three consecutive solo titles. That was Penn, from 1984-86 (after the Quakers also had shared the top spot in both 1982 and '83). But the 1985 team lost once (at Harvard) in league play. Now, Al Bagnoli's guys are in position to either match or surpass that. The Quakers have gone unbeaten in the Ivies the last 2 years. And with a lot back, they've been picked to finish first once again.

It's been almost three calendar years since the Penn Quakers lost an Ivy League football contest. Seven more wins and they will make history. The pressure surely is beginning to mount, right? Not so fast. Longtime head coach Al Bagnoli doesn't want his team to feel pressure with the approach of what may be an unprecedented third undefeated Ivy season. Those feelings won't produce results. Instead, he wants his players to take it all in. "We want players that kind of embrace that sort of expectation," Bagnoli said.

The two-time defending Ivy League champion Penn Quakers played their annual Red vs. Blue scrimmage on Saturday at Franklin Field, where nine starters and 32 letter-winners suited up for the session that concluded the team's spring drills. "This was easy for me because Penn wins," said Quakers coach Al Bagnoli, who will begin his 20th season at the helm with a 131-57 career record at Penn. "On paper, the offense won, but it was actually pretty close. As far as I'm concerned, we won because nobody got hurt, and Penn came out on top. " The competition was a simulated situational scrimmage in which the offense started each half at the 30-yard line.

  With painful losses to Harvard and Princeton behind them, the Penn Quakers move on for road games against Cornell on Friday and Columbia on Saturday. "You can't overlook them thinking about Harvard and Princeton," said Penn swingman Tyler Bernardini. "You have to take every weekend for what it is. If we lose these games this weekend, it doesn't matter whether we won or lost those games. " Last weekend, Penn suffered a double-overtime loss to Harvard at home, and followed that with a defeat at Princeton on Tuesday that required an extra session.

Niagara's Kayla Stroman hit a three-pointer with six seconds remaining to give the Purple Eagles a 52-51 victory over the Penn Quakers on Tuesday afternoon at the Palestra. Penn sophomore Brianna Bradford buried a trey with 1 minute, 3 seconds left to give Penn (2-3) a 50-47 lead. Niagara (1-5) hit two free throws on its next possession to cut the lead to one, but on Penn's next possession, freshman Alyssa Baron was fouled with 17 seconds to play. Baron's first attempt was good, but she missed the second, leading to Stroman's late-game heroics.

When the basketball team from Maryland-Baltimore County visited the famed Palestra for the first time in school history on Tuesday, the Penn Quakers started pressing the Retrievers as soon as the ball was put in play. They didn't stop until putting a 71-59 nonleague victory in the books. After leading by six points at halftime, Penn opened a 41-30 advantage with 15 minutes, 31 seconds remaining in the game on a three-point play by forward Jack Eggleston. The Quakers were not seriously threatened the rest of the way as they improved to 3-3. UMBC, which competes in the America East, lost for the sixth time in as many games.

The woman didn't try to fill the crowded room with answers or tell any of these football players how they were supposed to feel. She did read a poem that lived inside of her. Last April, the entire Penn Quakers football team had filled up a windowless classroom in the Engineering Quad at the University of Pennsylvania. The room is just across 33d Street from Franklin Field. The Quakers were there two days after a funeral for Owen Thomas, their teammate, who had committed suicide the week before.