After finishing the regular season ranked No. 7 in the country, the Penn men's squash team will close out their regular season this weekend at the College Squash Association Team Championships. "For a team that started out No. 11 at the beginning of the year, to end up five or six is unheard of," Penn senior Sam Miller said of the Quakers' possible ranking after this weekend. Penn and 31 other teams will battle it out at three venues -- Jadwin Gym and Dillon Gym at Princeton University and the Ringe Squash Courts here on Penn's campus. Penn's first opponent will be the host No. 2 Tigers, who boast arguably the best player in collegiate squash, Yasser El-Halaby. "He has great hands, moves well," Penn freshman Jacob Himmelrich said of the Princeton star. "He's just that type of player. He's very special." El-Halaby fell this past weekend to Trinity's No. 1, Bernardo Samper, as the Bantams secured the regular-season national championship with an 8-1 win over the Tigers. "I really am still a little shocked by the result," Penn No. 1 Richard Repetto said. Repetto will face El-Halaby on Friday afternoon at 4:30 p.m. "Hopefully I can take advantage of the loss," Repetto added. The Quakers are under no illusions about the gap between themselves and their opponent. A loss to the Tigers would set up a second-round match with No. 6 Cornell, who will first face No. 3 Yale in the double-elimination tournament. "Princeton's way too strong at the top," Repetto said. "The eyes are set on Cornell." Penn is looking to avenge a 7-2 loss to the Big Red earlier in the season, a match which many players felt should have been closer. "Someone's looking out for us, and we're going to get another shot at them, it seems," Penn senior co-captain Sam Miller said. Even with the forthcoming match against Penn's traditional Ivy League rival, Miller conceded that "Cornell is what has been on our minds all week." Princeton "will push us around," he said. "But with Cornell, we're going to push them around." Cornell is "the team to beat," Repetto said. The Red and Blue will have one weapon in their arsenal that they did not when they faced Cornell last November -- Elan Levy. The senior co-captain was nursing an injured quadriceps muscle at the time, but he will play this weekend. "I know that Elan is not 100 percent but he will play this weekend and he will be a benefit to the team," Miller said. "Not only with his oncourt skills, but he is a good leader and is the best at getting us all motivated for big matches." A win over the Big Red would set up a potential showdown with No. 5 Western Ontario, who first plays No. 4 Harvard and then would likely face No. 8 Dartmouth, who has the daunting task of playing Trinity to open its postseason. "Western Ontario's team would be a very tough team to beat," Repetto said. "The team's a little disorganized, but they are a pack of strong players." Repetto dismissed the notion that the cross-border travel combined with three days of intense squash would tire the Canadian team. "The way we will beat them is if we play extremely well and they have a few breakdowns," he said.
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