Penn came in a distant third at 625, 14 strokes behind the hosts.

While it appears that Harvard and Yale are currently neck-and-neck—the Crimson bested its archrival by just one stroke at the Nittany Lion Invitational two weeks ago—the tournament gave a glimpse of how the league leaders compare to the rest of the Ancient Eight.

“From what it’s looking like, Yale is about as strong as anyone; we’re about as strong as anyone,” Rhoads said. “Yale and us may be bunched kind of close together, and Princeton, Penn are not very far behind.”

Harvard now heads into the winter offseason having collected zero wins this season—a clear departure from last fall’s two first-place and one runner-up finishes.

“Last year we were where we wanted to be throughout the fall,” Rhoads said. “This year we know that we’re not where we want to be.”

Despite the stinging second-place finish, the squad emphasized the strides it has made during the fall season after coming out of the gate slowly last month.

“We were definitely disappointed [with the weekend],” Hu said, “but I think so far this whole season we’ve been steadily improving, so I feel good going into the spring season.”

It is clear, though, that the Crimson has its work cut out for it before it resumes competitive play in March.

“We need to work very hard in the offseason, probably harder than we’ve ever worked in the offseason, if we want to be at the top of the league by the end of the year,” Rhoads said.

—Staff writer Dennis J. Zheng can be reached at dzheng12@college.harvard.edu.