The Harvard men's tennis team capped off a perfect weekend by defeating Princeton, 5-2, yesterday in the finals of the ECAC team tournament.

The Crimson (4-0 overall), who came into the four-day tournament as the top seed and defending champion, breezed through its half of the bracket by defeating Temple 7-0, Brown 6-1, and Penn 6-1 en route to the finals.

The victory in the finals, which were held at Princeton, was tinged with sweet revenge as the Tigers had upset the Crimson in the first round of the NCAA Eastern Regional tournament last spring.

The Crimson began the weekend with a 7-0 triumph over 16th-seed Temple in the first round on Friday.

The Crimson dominated both the singles and doubles matches against the Owls, winning all three doubles pro-sets and sweeping all the singles matches in straight sets.

The match against Temple also saw the return of junior Todd Meringoff to the starting line-up.

Meringoff, who had not played since last March, punctuated his return with a 6-4, 6-0 win at second singles.

Harvard next faced eighth-seeded Brown in the Quarterfinals.

The Bears had upstaged the Crimson at the Yale Invitational tournament two weeks ago, winning two of the singles flights to the Crimson's none.

The head-to-head match on Saturday, however, yielded starkly different results.

The Crimson swept the doubles pro-sets to win the doubles team point and then took five of six singles matches to complete the rout.

If the competition was supported to get harder at the Crimson got deeper in the draw, somebody forgot to tell the netmen.

Harvard came out on Sunday to defeat fifth-seeded Penn, 6-1, in the semi-finals.

Captain Andrew Rueb, who also had been sidelined with an injury since last spring, triumphed in his return to first singles, winning 6-1, 7-6(4) against his Quaker opponent.

The Monday afternoon finals began dangerously for the Crimson as Princeton captured both first and third doubles to win the doubles team point.