Sophomore guard Michael Beal and the Crimson will have to avoid foul trouble in order to keep pace with the Quakers and the Tigers for a full forty minutes. Harvard will be aiming for only its second Ivy win.

Two second-half collapses led to two home Ivy losses for the Harvard men’s basketball team last weekend, hurting any chances that the Crimson had of taking momentum into this weekend’s visits to Penn and Princeton.

But as it turns out, Harvard (2-15, 1-3 Ivy) wasn’t the only team set reeling by last week’s outcomes.

The Quakers (7-8, 0-2) entered last weekend as the favorite to take the Ivy title. After two tough road losses to Yale and Brown—where Penn led the Bears by four with just three seconds remaining in regulation—the Quakers fell from frontrunner to cellar-dweller.

“I think it’s to the point now where there is no margin of error,” said Penn coach Fran Dunphy. “We’re in the soup and we need to find a way out.”

The Quakers have now dropped four of their last five games and three of the last four on the road.

Part of the blame for the recent slide has been pointed at Penn’s unwillingness to go to its bench in the second half of close ballgames.

“Every game presents a different challenge,” Dunphy said. “When the pressure gets turned up, you have a tendency to use your bench less. When somebody comes in and makes good plays you want to leave them in…but [late in games] you always want to put your best team out there.”

“Maybe some guys do get tired,” Dunphy added. “But those are 20, 21-year-old guys out there, and they’re pretty healthy.”

A brief respite should come in the form of visits from Harvard and Dartmouth tonight and tomorrow night, respectively. But a battle with Princeton (9-6, 2-0) looms on the horizon, as the Quakers will travel to Jadwin Gym to take on the Tigers next Tuesday night. With the Crimson and the Big Green each ranking in the bottom 15 of Division I according to the RPI, this could be the perfect setup for a Quaker letdown on the eve of its matchup with Princeton.

At 0-2 in the Ivies, however, Penn understands that every Ivy game is crucial and no team can be overlooked.

“We’re playing Division I college basketball and anybody can beat anybody on a given night,” Dunphy said.

If the Crimson were looking to take advantage of the Quakers while they were down, history is not on its side. Harvard has not beaten Penn on the road during coach Frank Sullivan’s tenure. It has been 13 years since the Crimson beat the Quakers at the Palestra.

Harvard also comes into tonight’s contest with just one road victory on the season—a 58-53 win over San Jose St. on Dec. 30.

But the outlook is not necessarily bleak for the Crimson.

In last weekend’s two double-digit defeats, Harvard held 14-point leads before collapsing in the second half of both games. Coming off a 16-day exam break, the Crimson’s conditioning was not at the level it needed to be to sustain a full forty-minute attack.