Competing without four regulars, the Harvard wrestling team split a pair of Ivy League matchups this weekend.

The Crimson (6-6, 2-2 Ivy) rushed out to a 28-0 lead to steamroll Columbia on Friday, and then watched as Cornell turned an 18-0 advantage into a 28-12 victory on Saturday.

The undermanned Harvard squad, though, refused to dwell on the loss.

“We knew going into Cornell that it was going to be tough [with the missing players],” said freshman Joe Turilli. “We are better than the score showed.”

The Crimson wrestled without injured junior Reggie Lee, sophomores Brandon Kaufmann and P.J. Jones, who were suffering the after-effects of eating from the Dunster and Mather kitchens. Freshman Jon Mankovich was also sick.

The most dominating wrestler on the New York swing was sophomore Jesse Jantzen. Jantzen, currently ranked No. 5 in the nation and No. 1 in the EIWA at 149 lbs., pinned the Lions’ Matt Pierce in 0:55 on Friday before crushing the Big Red’s Chris Pirch 17-0 in 4:41 on Saturday. The victories raised Jantzen’s season mark to 27-2.

“I actually wrestled a back-up guy,” Jantzen said after pinning Pierce. “One of their top guys [sophomore Eric Norgaard] didn’t wrestle. If he was on the mat it would have been a little tougher.”

The other two Harvard wrestlers to sweep their weekend matches were co-captains Kevin El-Hayek and Dawid Rechul, the NCAA’s No. 12 ranked heavyweight.

With the exception of Lee, the full Crimson lineup should wrestle this weekend as the team gets its final warmup for the EIWA tournament beginning March 9.

“Some of the dual meets we’ve lost—Penn and Cornell—aren’t reflective of the way we’ve wrestled,” Jantzen said. “We should be in a good position to defend our title.”

Harvard will next compete on Saturday, when it travels to Brown at 12 p.m. and BU at 7 p.m for its final dual-meets of the season.

Cornell 28, Harvard 12

A strong showing by the Crimson’s stars wasn’t enough, as Harvard wrestled away only three matches from the Big Red (6-3, 4-1) at Teagle Hall on Saturday. The win put Cornell alone in second place in the Ivy standings, behind No. 8 Penn.

Cornell seized an early lead, winning the first four bouts of the day, each of which featured a nationally-ranked Big Red wrestler. But down 18-0, the Crimson made a later surge, winning 12 of the last 22 points on victories by Rechul, El-Hayek and Jantzen.

Rechul won the heavyweight match with a 10-2 major decision over Matt Bogumil, and El-Hayek picked up three points for the Crimson on a 2-1 decision over Alejandro Alvarez at 133 lbs.