In the Harvard men’s lacrosse team’s last game of the season, the result was all but irrelevant for the Crimson while Dartmouth had every reason to battle.

Although the year had begun with high expectations, Harvard could only muster one Ivy win—over Brown, which finished last in the league—and no wins over ranked opponents. The Crimson (5-10, 1-5 Ivy) had been battling injuries all year, suffering especially with injury to tri-captain attack Matt Primm, who led the team with 28 points.

The Big Green, however, having just defeated Princeton the previous week in a stunning upset, had a chance to win its first share of the Ivy title since 1965 and was playing in front of a rambunctious home crowd.

But rather than give in to Dartmouth, Harvard made the Big Green work for its 5-4 victory, ending the season appropriately with a fight to the finish.

The first seven goals all resulted in lead changes or ties, and though Dartmouth went up 5-3 with 8:23 remaining in regulation, the Crimson still managed to nearly tie things up when sophomore attack Mike McBride scored with just over a minute remaining.

The loss to the Big Green closed out Harvard’s toughest portion of the schedule, in which it played four ranked teams—Dartmouth, Notre Dame, UMass and Princeton—in six games. Harvard ended up dropping five of these games, beating only Colgate in nearly a month of play.

Preceding this season-ending slide was the Crimson’s victory over the Bears on April 9, when Harvard won 12-6 at Jordan Field. The Crimson dominated the match, scoring five unanswered goals to open the game. Eight different players scored the 12 goals for Harvard and junior midfielder Alex Vap to pick up 15-of-21 face-offs.

Vap was consistently dominant in this area, leading Harvard to a .601 face-off percentage.

Also impressive in the victory was the Crimson’s ability to shut down Brown’s second team All-Ivy attack, Jon Thompson, who was leading the Ivy League in goals per game and had just scored seven goals against Georgetown—the then-No. 1 defense in the country—the week before.

“Coming in we knew he was their big gun, so we tried to key off of him and make sure their offense couldn’t get going,” Primm said after the game.

Although Brown was the only Ivy opponent that the Crimson was able to prove victorious over, Harvard came very close to upsetting then-No. 12 Cornell, who finished atop the conference with Princeton and Dartmouth but was not invited to the NCAA tournament.

The Crimson had a 4-3 lead with 11:38 remaining in the game, but three consecutive scores put the game out of reach, and allowed the Big Red to pick up its 6-5 victory.

“We were really disappointed,” said junior attack Anders Johnson after the game. “Cornell is at the top of the Ivy League with Princeton, and it’s frustrating because we could have had them. A few less errors and the outcome could have been very different.”

—Staff writer Evan R. Johnson can be reached at erjohns@fas.harvard.edu.