The change in the margin on the leaderboard, however, was much larger.

“We knew that they were stronger in certain events coming into the meet,” Moccari said. “We knew there were going to be events that we were going to score a lot more points than them and there were going to be events where they were going to score a lot more points than us...They had the top two seeds in the event coming and we knew it would be tough.”

With the Crimson placing just two swimmers in the top 24, compared to the Tigers’ six, Princeton added 63 points to its lead, negating Harvard’s comeback strides over the previous four races and leaving too little time for the Crimson to rally for another charge.

Sophomore Danil Rybalko and senior Ricky Roy, winner of the Michael Award as the meet’s top diver, placed second and third, respectively, in the three-meter diving finals, closing the margin.

“At that point, we didn’t really look at the scoreboard that much, we just concentrated on having the best meet we could possibly have,” Rybalko said. “The past couple of years diving has been a big part of the swimming and the swimmers definitely counted on us to provide as many points as we could.”

But the effort, no matter how good, wasn’t enough as the Tigers placed second and Harvard third in the 400-yard freestyle relay to close the meet.

One year removed from second-place finishes in each of the five relays held, each time behind Princeton, the Crimson continued to struggle to make a dent in the freestyle team races, twice placing third.

But co-captain Kemi George, junior Ryan Smith, Cromwell and Grant broke the Tigers’ monopoly atop the medley relays, besting Princeton in both the 200-yard and 400-yard.

In the latter, Harvard led from the first stroke, sustaining Cromwell’s blistering initial pace in the backstroke for a 4.34-second victory.

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.