It wasn’t The Game, but the ECAC tournament semifinal between Yale and the Harvard men’s tennis team Sunday afternoon was just as emotional and exciting.

Proving that the Ivy League will be much deeper than last year, the Bulldogs pulled out a 4-3 upset over Harvard at the Beren Tennis Center. The loss killed Harvard’s chance to compete in the National Team Indoors for the second straight fall.

Yale advanced to yesterday’s final against Brown, which defeated Princeton in its semifinal.

“It was a great tennis match,” Harvard Coach David Fish ’72 said. “It’s great for the Ivy League as well.”

Sunday’s Harvard-Yale matchup was highly anticipated ever since the 16-team tournament draw was released Wednesday. Last spring, the Elis had handed the Crimson its only Ivy loss en route to Harvard’s league championship.

The Crimson, seeded No. 1, had rolled over Marist, 6-1 in the first round, and then Columbia, 6-1, in the quarterfinals.

Yale, the fourth seed, beat Colgate 6-1 in the first round. It followed that victory with a 5-2 win over perennial Ivy contender Penn in the quarterfinals.

Blustery winds and an early October cold snap made conditions horrible for tennis.

The match started with the three doubles contests. Yale’s Andrew Rosenfeld and David Goldman struck first, defeating Chris Chiou and Brian Wan, 8-6, at No. 3 doubles. Harvard co-captain William Lee and sophomore Mark Riddell, playing at No. 2 doubles, edged out Chris Shackleton and Ryan Coyle, 8-6 to tie things up.

All eyes turned to the No. 1 match between Yale’s Steve Berke and Dustin West and the Crimson combo of junior Oli Choo and freshman Jonathan Chu. Choo-Chu were losing 7-3, but had managed to save a match point and broke the Eli’s serve. But the Harvard duo, after going up 40-love, gave up five straight points on Chu’s serve and lost the match, 8-4.

Even though Yale had snagged the doubles point, it was Harvard that came out with the early momentum in singles.

Riddell, playing at the No. 5 singles spot, easily took the first set, 6-1, over Rosenfeld. A few minutes later, Chu took advantage of some early breaks to win the first set over Goldman, 6-1, at No. 2 singles. And sophomore Cliff Nguyen, at No. 3, also had won his first set, 6-1 over Shackleton.

Only sophomore George Turner at No. 6 singles lost his first set, 6-4, to Yale’s Johnny Lu.

The other singles matches, at Nos. 1 and 4, were already turning into battles. Choo, at No. 4, had managed to win his first set, 6-4, over Ryan Murpy but the young Bulldog showed signs of coming back.

At the top singles match, Lee had a tall order facing off against Berke, the Northeast’s best player and last season’s Ivy Player of the Year.