dperry
Postdoc
Posts: 2215
Loc: Houston, TX
Reg: 11-24-04
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03-03-24 04:10 PM - Post#364416
I have been AWOL this season because a.) lots of RL going on right now, and b.) both bball teams have been way too depressing to watch, particularly the men, but I do have to come on to give major props to men's squash, who just gave a serious beatdown to Trinity in the national championship match, winning six of the first seven matches before the College Squash Association called a TKO. This gains revenge for their 5-4 loss to the Bantams in the regular season, and in the semifinals we also turned the tables on the orange plague, beating the Tigers 5-4 after they had edged us by the same score in league play in Princeton to force a split of the league title.
I will give this some relevance to the basketball situation by pointing out the importance of coaching and facilities. Penn is only the sixth program ever to have won the men's nine-player championship (the other five are Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Navy a couple of times way back, and of course Trinity has a bunch recently.) Since their heyday in the early '70's with Al Molloy, Penn had been mediocre at best. Gilly Lane, a very good player for Penn himself, was brought back as an assistant about eleven years ago and became head coach in 2016. In eight years he's taken this program from meh to breaking into a very exclusive club with members who have a lot of recruiting advantages against us. This guy is a genius, and he's bringing back seven of today's nine starters, four of whom are underclassmen, so if he can bring in even one halfway-decent player next year, they will be in the mix for the title next year as well. It also helps that the alums helped them build the best facility in the country at the moment (although wouldn't you bleepin' know it, the Jerseyites have new courts coming next year, albeit not on main campus), and Drexel made a deal with US Squash to turn that old armory on Lancaster Avenue into the National Squash Center, so national championships are going to be four blocks away for the foreseeable future. While basketball's facilities are already upgraded and quite good, we obviously need some work on the coaching side.  Let's hope this year is bad enough to get that change made.
Well, baseball finally won the Ivies for me last year, and I have now seen a Penn team win a national championship, so I think my Quaker fan agenda is now complete; everything else is gravy from here on out!
Hail, Alma Mater
Thy sons cheer thee now
To thee, Pennsylvania
All rivals must bow!!
Glorious forever
Thy colors here will be
Forever, forever
They'll wave in victory!!
David Perry
Penn '92
"Hail, Alma Mater/Thy sons cheer thee now
To thee, Pennsylvania/All rivals must bow!!!" |
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