This weekend the elite of Ivy League basketball past meet the elite of Ivy League basketball present as No. 22 Cornell travels to Penn tonight and Princeton tomorrow evening. The Quakers and the Tigers captured a combined 46 titles over a 52-year stretch until the Red dethroned the kings of the Ancient Eight with two consecutive conference crowns over the last two seasons.

Princeton (13-5, 4-0 Ivy) and Penn (3-15, 2-2 Ivy) were selected to finish second and third, respectively, in the preseason Ivy League media poll, as Cornell (20-3, 6-0 Ivy) and the Tigers remain the only two unbeaten teams in the conference.

The Quakers did not earn their first victory until Jan. 6, after opening up the campaign with a 10-game losing skid. Much of the hype surrounding the team quickly evaporated after Penn’s first two contests when junior guard Tyler Bernardini, the 2007-08 Ivy League Rookie of the Year, and fellow starter, senior forward Andreas Schreiber, were sidelined for the remainder of the season due to injuries. Bernardini suffered an injury to his right foot and Schreiber’s season was cut short due to a recurring shoulder injury.

In their absence, sophomore guard Zack Rosen has emerged as the Quakers’ most potent offensive threat, averaging 16.7 points on 42 percent shooting from the floor as well as 4.0 assists and 3.6 rebounds per game.

Penn dismissed head coach Glen Miller on Dec. 12, 2009, after the team dropped its seventh consecutive game. Miller, who was hired in 2006, was replaced by interim head coach Jerome Allen. The Quakers seem to be turning things around, as they have won two of their last three contests and are tied for fourth in the Ivy League.

Cornell head coach Steve Donahue attributes much of Penn’s early season woes to a depleted lineup.

“I think it has a lot to do with injuries,” Donahue said. “When you lose your All-Ivy in Tyler Bernardini and Andreas Schreiber, [your team takes a step back]. Those two in particular are [two of] the better players in the league, so you throw them in with Rosen and now the other kids don’t have to do as much. I think all of the other guys are very good role players, but those three guys are really good basketball players in the Ivy League, and I think they would be right there if it wasn’t for that.”

He doesn't just bring the heat from outside...: Senior forward Ryan Wittman (20) recorded his first career dunk last Saturday against Brown.

“They’re playing a lot better than they were earlier in the year,” added senior forward Ryan Wittman. “They’re definitely going to be a physical team. That’s something they’ve always been since I’ve been here. They look to get the ball inside a lot so that should be a good challenge for us.”

Cornell has enjoyed a stretch of four straight victories over Penn by an average of 13.5 points after losing 18 consecutive contests to the Quakers. The last time these two teams met, the Red clinched an NCAA tournament bid with an 83-59 home court victory on March 6, 2009.

Tomorrow evening’s 6 p.m. tip off at Princeton marks the second time this season Cornell will face an undefeated conference foe, having dismantled Harvard by 36 points two weeks ago. Both teams enter the weekend playing winning basketball as of late, as the Tigers have won 11 of their last 12 games and the Red has captured 18 of its last 19 contests.

“What I will say is that it’s obviously an extremely important game for both programs,” Donahue added. “Once again we don’t have a conference tournament and [the Tigers] have done a good job. They’ve got off to a great start, so it would be foolish not to think this wasn’t a very important game. That being said, there’s a lot of basketball to be played. Whether you win or lose this, you really have to do a lot of work the rest of the way.”

Princeton boasts the nation’s top scoring defense, surrendering a miniscule 52.9 points per game. Cornell enters this weekend scoring at a 76.7 clip and has outscored its opponents in each of the last 16 halves. Donahue attributes the Tigers’ success on defense largely to the team’s philosophy of ball control and eating up the clock on offense.

“There are not a lot of possessions in the Princeton game,” Donahue said. “This year they are a good defensive team. They do a very good job of swarming the basketball. It’s hard to run your offense consistently. You have to always make good decisions and be strong with the basketball. I think [Princeton head coach] Sydney [Johnson] really has those guys buying into the defensive side of the ball. I thought they were good defensively last year. They’re better this year.”

The last time the Red played in Jadwin Gymnasium, on Feb. 6, 2009, the Tigers handed Cornell its most lopsided loss in conference action since the 2003-04 season. Princeton’s 61-41 victory snapped the Red’s 19-game Ivy League win streak and marked the second-largest margin of defeat for this year’s class of seniors. Their largest margin of defeat came on Mar. 20, 2008, to Stanford, 77-54, in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

“We know that [tomorrow] is going to be a big game,” said senior guard Louis Dale. “We definitely want to get payback for how we played at Princeton last year. We want to come out ready to play and give a lot of effort. I think if we do that, then we’ll be successful.”

“That game I thought Princeton played really well,” Donahue said. “I thought they took it to us. I would hope that we’ve learned our lessons from that. The other thing is that it’s a totally different team and a totally different year. Even though a lot of players are similar, there are a lot of differences in who’s playing more, who’s playing well, the styles and just how each team is going about their business. We’re looking forward to playing everybody on the road. I think last year in the league in particular we probably weren’t happy with our road play. That was part of the reason we did all the preseason stuff and went into hard places to really challenge our guys, and I feel good about our ability to go on the road and play now.”

If Cornell sweeps the weekend pair, it will become only the sixth team in league history to win back-to-back games on the road against these two traditional Ancient Eight powerhouses. More significantly, the Red can tie the program’s single-season win benchmark of 22 set by the 2007-08 club with two victories this weekend and catapult its ascent in both the ESPN/USA Today coaches’ poll and the AP poll.