"Individually we were working on things, but collectively we weren't doing it," Davison said. "We didn't connect on the same level we could have."

Once Davison tallied Harvard's first second-period goal with 13:27 left to play, making the score 9-4, it was too little, too late. Princeton's a great team--certainly good enough to play keep-away for 10 minutes.

The loss set the tone for the rest of spring break. Determined to improve, Harvard flew to Florida for an informal tournament with a horde of unimpressive teams--the only Division I team there, Stanford, just started playing varsity lacrosse.

For the first few days, the Crimson worked at fixing up its Achilles heel--the transition.

"We had tons and tons of drills," Davison said. "We practiced on just moving the ball faster and faster."

Then, it was time for Harvard to have its first game since the Princeton loss. It wasn't pretty--for the opposition.

The final score against Stanford last Friday was 20-2, and it wasn't even that close.

"[Stanford] is a new program," Schoyer said. "I thought that they were all right, but we were really fired up."

The Fall of the Titan

But wait! Princeton can't quite yet engrave its name on another NCAA championship trophy. The Tigers fell to fourth-ranked Dartmouth on Saturday, 10-9, providing the Big Green with some sweet revenge.

For each of the past two seasons, Dartmouth has lost seemingly insurmountable leads to Princeton. Last year, the Big Green was up by two with 30 seconds left but lost in double-overtime. And two years ago, the Tigers roared back from a 8-3 deficit with eight minutes to go to win in OT.

The upset also gives Harvard the chance to guarantee a first-place tie in the league if it wins the rest of its Ivy games. Of course, one of those is against Dartmouth.

"That was sweet news for us," Duffy said. "Those two show how strong the Ivy League is now."