And Princeton’s reign at the top of the marine food chain was ultimately short-lived.

“I think [H-Y-P] showed us we could beat them, but that it was never going to come to us, we had to actually be the aggressors,” McConnell said. “It made the people who may have been cocky before the meet reevaluate what they thought and made the team work even harder to get where we wanted to be come March.”

That dedication and work ethic characterized the second-half of the season from top to bottom.

“[Coach] Tim [Murphy] lives almost an hour away and instead of going home one night [after a snowstorm], he chose to sleep at the pool to guarantee we would have a coach on the pool deck in the morning,” McConnell said. “I didn’t realize what he had done when I came down the next morning and so I asked him what time he had to get up to get to the pool by 5:50 a.m. Very nonchalantly, he told me that he hadn’t gone home, [because] if he had there would have been no way he could have made it on time. It was then, looking at him and realizing he had never considered any other options, that I knew we could, and should win Easterns.”

At the 2003 EISL Championship, the Crimson drew first blood, swimming more races on day one and bursting out to a commanding early meet lead in excess of 100 points.

Capitalizing on its depth, the squad placed in the top-eight time after time.

In the 200-yard individual medley, co-captain Dan Shevchik, junior Rassan Grant and Gentilucci swept the top three spots to give Harvard an early edge.

The margin was not meant to last.

The Tigers roared back to win six of eight races, erasing the considerable deficit and precariously perching themselves atop the leader board.

“After the second day of the meet there may have been a little doubt because we were behind, and we knew that we had to have a virtually perfect third day in order to win the meet,” Gentilucci said. “But we laid those doubts aside and put our faith in each other.”

Heightening the frustration was the feeling that the standings, even with Princeton’s strong performance, were not the way they should have been.

“The largest difficulty we had to overcome was Alex Siroky’s disqualification in the 400 IM on the second day,” Gentilucci said. “The disqualification took about 25 points away from us, and we knew that we needed every single point we could get if we were going to win. Everyone was very upset and angry that an official had made that call at such a critical time. We just had to put it out of our heads and focus on the task at hand.”

The pendulum and the momentum it carried would swing back one final time.

Unwilling to be vanquished on a third consecutive occasion, Harvard posted three victories and 17 top-eight finishes.

The first race of the final evening went to the Crimson, which never looked back. Harvard was master of the East once more.