You've waited all year for this. You sat through the early non-conference games against the Keene States and Holy Crosses and watched the team try to find itself.
You sadly read online reports of the Dec. 15 loss at Harvard over Winter break and trudged home unhappily after the defeat was repeated in Hanover early in January.
You celebrated the perfect Columbia/Cornell and Yale/Brown weekends at home just as you mourned the defeats in Providence and New Haven five weekends before that.
Perhaps you even wept when the team fell 72-47 in New Jersey on Feb. 11 and 75-61 in Philadelphia the next night.
But now the tears have dried. The waiting is over. Revenge is yet again within reach.
This Friday and Saturday night, Dartmouth men's basketball hosts the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University -- the two most prolific teams in Ivy basketball history. Between them, the Quakers and Tigers have won 36 of the last 40 Ancient Eight titles, and this year has not altered the pattern.
Penn enters Friday's contest at 16-7 overall, having vanquished all eight of its Ivy opponents this year by an average margin of 17 points.
Princeton's 1999-2000 team is a weakened version of its squad from a year ago, having graduated the Ivy Player of the Year and another first-team All-Ivy performer. Injury problems earlier in the season resulted in a fluke two-point loss at Yale a month ago, and the Tigers also fell to Penn 55-46 at home as well.
Despite their various difficulties and ailments, the Tigers boast a .750 winning percentage in conference and had no trouble dispatching the Big Green when they visited Princeton three weeks ago today.
