The 2013 Harvard men’s lacrosse team seemed to finish right where it had started.

A year ago, the Crimson concluded its 2012 season just outside the Ivy League postseason picture with a 10-8 loss to Yale and a 6-8 overall, 2-4 in-conference record. This Saturday, the 2013 Crimson finished in similar fashion, losing to Yale, 11-10, to leave the field with an identical 6-8 overall, 2-4 in-conference record. The results suggest that the Crimson maintained the status quo this season after a disappointing 2012 campaign.

But a closer look reveals the opposite. While last year’s Harvard men’s lacrosse team may have underachieved, this year’s squad almost overachieved. The Crimson came within a goal or two of breaking through in big ways this year, despite internal challenges and external obstacles.

In 2012, Harvard returned 10 of 11 starters to enter February as Inside Lacrosse Magazine’s preseason No. 11. The 2013 Crimson, in contrast, had to meet the challenge of several big-name departures, both expected and unexpected. Most notably, Harvard lost all-time career scoring leader Jeff Cohen to graduation, and the team had to adjust to the absence of its second-highest scorer, junior attackman Danny Eipp, who suffered a torn ACL midway through the season.

Yet Sophomore midfielder Murphy Vandervelde and junior attackman Peter Schwartz elevated their games in Eipp’s absence, and highly-touted freshman Devin Dwyer commanded the attack from the X with Siyani Chambers-esque maturity. With the impending return of Eipp and others, Harvard should be optimistic about its offensive prospects next year.

The Crimson also had to jockey for position in an enhanced Ivy League. The conference finally lived up to the hype of its recruiting classes this year. At the end of the regular season, the Ivy League still placed four teams in the national top-20, and Harvard would have likely joined them with a win over the Bulldogs on Saturday. There were four games this season that Harvard would probably like to have back: an 11-9 loss at Brown on Mar. 16, a 12-11 loss versus No. 12/10 Duke on Mar. 30, a 14-12 loss versus No. 2 Cornell on Apr. 6, and the 11-10 loss to No. 15 Yale on Saturday.

In each of those games, the Crimson outplayed its opponent for long stretches. In the first three of these games, Harvard led by multiple goals in the second half. Against Yale, the Crimson forced Bulldog goalkeeper Eric Natale to make two saves in the final half minute to prevent overtime.

Trade a hit pipe for a goal and an unforced turnover for a caught ball in any one of these games and Harvard’s year changes dramatically. The brevity of the Crimson’s 14-game season magnified each missed shot and misplayed ball in these close games. I know that it can be foolish to play the “what if” game when evaluating a season, but the Harvard-Yale game in particular leant itself to such speculation.

What if Dwyer had buried that shot at the top of the crease? What if Schwartz had caught that ball? What if Natale’s leg hadn’t blocked Mumford’s shot? What if the Crimson hadn’t taken six penalties?

I’m sure that at least a couple of these questions entered the minds of Harvard players as they walked off the field Saturday.

Lacrosse is a game of details. In the end, those details sunk a Crimson squad that struggled to put together a perfect game. But Harvard’s performances against Cornell, Yale, and Duke were arguably better than the performances of its supposedly stronger 2012 roster.

Despite the graduations of leading goal-scorer Alex White, captain Jason Gonos, and starting goalkeeper Harry Krieger, Harvard’s young core will come back next year more experienced and better prepared to challenge for an Ivy League title. That experience will come in handy in the tight, late-game situations that were often the Crimson’s undoing this season.

The Harvard men’s lacrosse team may have finished its season on a losing streak, but it nevertheless proved that it could compete with the nation’s best on a consistent basis. The weakened squad was expected to take a step back this year. Instead, the Crimson just may have taken a step forward.

In interviews before and after Harvard-Yale, Gonos emphasized that the team’s work ethic and chemistry separated itself from past years’ squads.

“This is the closest team I’ve been on,” Gonos said after the game. “We consider ourselves a family. And you get that by how hard we worked, and we worked harder than we ever have before.”

Add those elements to an increased level of talent and experience next year, and you’ve got a winning combination.

—Staff writer Michael D. Ledecky can be reached at mledecky@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @mdledecky.