Even the best of dynasties can have an off year.

The Harvard men’s swimming and diving team made sure that last year’s defeat was just that and reclaimed the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League (EISL) title on Saturday evening with 1,592 points, edging out Princeton and its 1,556 in a competition which might as well have excluded the other eight schools present.

The victory marks the team’s seventh league championship in eight years.

Either the Crimson or the Tigers placed first in all 21 events, with Princeton taking 13 of them.

The Harvard squad emerged victorious as a result of consistent top-eight finishing, the points from which negated and eventually surpassed those the Tigers’ earned with first-place finishes.

Initially, the Crimson appeared poised to cruise to easy victory, splitting Thursday night’s final heats with Princeton but leading by more than 100 points.

On Friday, however, the momentum swung in the Tigers’ favor. Princeton won six of eight events, assuming an 11-point lead.

“We had more swims than [Princeton] on Thursday, so we were up,” senior Mike Gentilucci said. “But we knew that we didn’t really have a lead because they were going to have more swims than us on Friday. But we were pretty down on Friday [after Princeton took the lead].”

The Harvard swimmers rose to answer the challenge placed before them, recapturing the lead in Saturday night’s first event and turning in three individual victories and 17 top-eight performances on the evening to build an advantage they would never surrender.

“You always want to swim your best, so we were shooting to win,” Gentilucci said. “But the main goal was a team goal, and we needed to get all the people we could into the top heat.”

The duo of captain Dan Shevchik and junior John Cole led the way for the Crimson swimmers, as each won what has become their EISL Championship meet standard of three individual events en route to two more Phil Moriarty Awards for leading all scorers.

Shevchik was also the recipient of the Ulen Award, presented to the senior with the most EISL points accumulated over his career.

He began with a strong showing on Friday night, setting the EISL Championship record for the 200-yard individual medley in his first victory of the meet with a time of 1:46.98.

Junior Rassan Grant placed second and Gentilucci placed third.

Shevchik proceeded to touch the wall first in the 400-yard IM and the 200-yard backstroke, threatening both of his own records in the process but falling just short of them.