By Peter A. Martin

The No. 8 men’s rowing team completed its regular season last weekend with a down-to-the-wire loss.

The No. 3 Harvard Crimson passed the Huskies in the last 15 feet to edge out a win in a time of 5:43.7 to Northeastern’s 5:44.4.

The loss drops the rowing dogs to 3-2 on the season, an impressive mark when the team faced four teams ranked in or receiving votes in the USRowing Collegiate Top 20 poll.

The Huskies’ only other loss was a convincing beating by No. 2 Brown Saturday, April 19 at the Dreissigacker Cup on the Charles River.

Following its loss to Brown, the crew rebounded beating Rutgers and the University of Pennsylvania on back-to-back days to stay ranked.

The crew now prepares for the two championship regattas that close the season, the EARC Sprints May 18 in Worcester and the IRA Championship June 5-7 in Camden, N.J.

The EARCs will be contested among the rowing schools of the East, and is seen in rowing circles as the warm-up to the true championship, the IRAs.

However, the competition will be abundant in both of the races. The opponents that defeated the Huskies, Brown and Harvard, will be in attendance as well as No. 5 Princeton, No. 7 Columbia and No. 10 Syracuse University.

While the Huskies are not the favorite for the Sprints, they are considered by some a dark horse to win.

In April, the Huskies’ first regatta was against the same competition they are slated to face in the Sprints and IRAs. It was a cross-section of the top crews in the country, and Northeastern finished fifth in the Grand Final, just three seconds behind top Eastern crew Princeton.

The IRAs will have an even stiffer level of competition, as nearly every crew in the Top 20 will be in attendance, battling for the title.