The Lions came in third behind Yale and Syracuse, and in front of Villanova.

"On the whole, our performance was mediocre." PJ Freuler said, "Traditionally, we have been unable to swim well on the road and the tradition continued on Saturday."

This invitational proved to be a very long day for the Lions. The invitational style meet, with four teams, both men's and women's racing, and a longer list of events, turned into a nine-hour event, instead of the usual three-hour dual meets.

"The fact that it was an invitational took the intensity away," Chris Ferris, senior co-captain said. "The lack of the head-to-head [racing of the dual meets], took out the intensity."

Ferris also commenting on the sluggish performance of the team attributed some of the disappointing performance to the end of the Thanksgiving break and the absence of some of the swimmers because of illness or family commitments.

"It's not that we swam extremely poorly, it's just that we were kinda flat," Ferris said.

Senior sprinter Gered Doherty agreed with Ferris, attributing the lack of intensity to the absence of some key swimmers and the length of the meet.

Despite the overall "flat" performance, there were some highlights of the weekend. The 200 medley relay (Matt Schultz, Sharif Khaleel, Joe Zdrilic, and Doherty) in particular, swam its season's best time, 1:33.98. Doherty earned a second place in the 50-yard freestyle, Colin Shannahan performed well in the 200-yard freestyle, and Freuler had good races in the 200 fly and the 400-yard individual medley.

The diving team's results were one of the few true highlights of the meet. On both the one-meter and the three-meter board the Lions managed to sweep the top three places against Yale.

Mark Fichera won in both events, Stu Machir earned a second place on the one meter board, and third on the three meter, and Daniel Brown placed third on the one meter and second on the three meter.

Even the good results of the diving team do not particularly reflect how the divers felt about their performance. Like the swimmers, the divers didn't have their best performance, but the team depth proved to be a big factor. Daniel Brown commented on the depth, "If one of us, or even two of us, have a bad meet, the other guy(s) can step it up and win it. I am really excited about the rest of the season. I hope we can assert ourselves as the best diving team in the league and give the swim team extra points to beat other schools." With the depth of this team, Brown's goal is definitely within reach.

The swim team's focus now is on next weekend's meet with Cornell. The Big Red has beaten the Lions for the last three years, but every year, it has been a struggle, with Cornell looking to gain every advantage possible.

"We have got to go into [the meet against] Cornell with extreme intensity because we heard they are going to shave [in order to go faster] for us and that always ups the stakes of a meet. That shows they can't race us without an advantage..." Doherty said.

The Lions look to erase the mistakes of Saturday and not let a mediocre performance hold them down.