The Harvard men’s tennis team missed its opportunity for a second straight Ivy League title yesterday when it dropped a narrow 4-3 decision to Brown in Providence, R.I. The weekend was not a total loss, however, as the Crimson (13-5, 5-1 Ivy) exacted revenge on Yale, 5-2, at home on Friday.

Though the Bears finished their Ivy season undefeated and will get the automatic Ivy bid to the NCAA tournament, the Crimson’s current ranking (No. 27) in the national polls puts the team in good position to get an at-large berth to the NCAA tournament.

“That’s the real championship,” co-captain William Lee said. “That’s what we’re playing for.”

Harvard still has one more Ivy match left—at home versus Dartmouth on Wednesday afternoon.

“Coming out of the region we still know we’re the team to beat,” co-captain Dalibor Snyder said. “We still have the proven track record. We have to beat Dartmouth if we’re going to make it.”

Brown 4, Harvard 3

In front of a raucous crowd of nearly 300 at the Erickson Athletic Complex, Brown, looking for its first-ever conference championship, upset the Crimson in a showdown that had been highly anticipated since the fall.

The Bears got on the board first when they won at two of the three doubles matches. First, Bears teammates Chris Drake and Justin Natale upended the No. 1 Harvard team of junior David Lingman and freshman Jonathan Chu, 8-5. The Crimson’s solid No. 2 duo, Lee and sophomore Chris Chiou, knotted things up with their 8-4 defeat of Nick Malone and Adil Shamasdin. Brown clinched the point at the No. 3 match, as Brown’s James Cerratani and Nick Goldberg handled Snyder and sophomore Mark Riddell 8-3.

“In almost every game we had break points,” Snyder said. “We could not capitalize on their mistakes.”

During the back-and-forth singles portion of the match, excitement ran high due to some intriguing matchups. Chu, playing No. 1, faced off against Nick Malone—a foe against whom he had split a pair of matches earlier this year. Yesterday afternoon, Chu was the clear winner in a straight-set, 6-4, 6-2 victory.

Natale mirrored those results for Brown, taking out Lingman at No. 2 singles, 6-2, 6-4. Riddell then beat Drake, 6-4, 6-2 at No. 4 singles, but Brown quickly regained the lead a minute later when Goldberg defeated Harvard junior Oli Choo, 6-3, 6-3 in No. 6 singles.

At this point only two matches were left on the courts, both in their third sets. Lee and Shamasdin were in a battle. The senior had a 4-2 lead in the final frame, but Shamasdin stormed back and took the set 6-4, clinching the championship for Brown.

“I didn’t keep up,” Lee said. “I wasn’t very aggressive.”

The Crimson, while disappointed with the loss of its Ivy title hopes, recognized that the results were not indicative of its ability.

“Brown came out really excited, but we came out to play [too],” Snyder said. “We put ourselves in position to win.”