Who needs James Blake when you have Andrew Styperek?

Not the Harvard men's tennis team this weekend in Princeton, where it was competing for the Eastern College Athletic Conference fall championship.

Styperek, a junior, completed Harvard's amazing comeback in the finals Monday against Columbia, where the Crimson, down 3-0 emerged from the absolute brink of elimination to pull out a 4-3 series victory and take the championship.

Columbia started the day strong, winning the doubles point by sweeping the three doubles matches. Salil Seshadri and Akram Zaman defeated the No. 1 team of co-captain Joe Green and Styperek 8-6, and the No. 2 pairing of sophomore William Lee and freshman Dave Lingman fell to the Lions' Sam Josephs and Donny Opici 9-7. Mickey Kaplan and Peter Holik completed the sweep by beating juniors Mike Rich and Anthony Barker 8-5, giving Columbia a 1-0 team lead.

"Basically, I was telling these guys that every one of them could win their match," co-captain John Doran said.

After the doubles debacle, things went from bad to worse for the Crimson. Seshadri defeated Lingman, who was playing in only his second singles match of the tournament, 7-6 (7-2), 6-4, and Opici polished off Barker 6-2, 6-2. The Lions had a 3-0 lead and needed only one more point to claim the championship.

Of the four remaining singles matches on the court, Columbia players had won the first set in three of them.

Then, Lee came through.