Boston University knocked Harvard out of the ECAC hockey tournament with a bruising 6-3 win at Watson Rink last night. The villains of the night were referees Bob Barry and Walter Fitzgerald, who bovinely allowed the hard-hitting game to degenerate into a bloodbath, while the heroine for the victorious Terriers had to be Lady Luck, who was responsible for a Crimson-controlled first period showing up on the scoreboard as a 3-0 Terrier lead.

Harvard, which rose to the level of play that beat B.U. 8-5 in December, fought back with three second-period goals and was very much in contention going into the final period, despite a 5-3 deficit.

But B.U.'s Dick Toomey caught the absolute corner of the Harvard goal with one of the prettiest shots ever seen at Watson all year at 1:45 of the final frame. If that killed the Crimson comeback hopes, they were buried by the ensuing avalanche of 23 penalty minutes, evenly spaced.

The story of the penalties, which were assessed incomprehensibly and unevenly to the tune of Harvard 31 minutes, B.U. 19, belongs after the story of the game, which was told in the first period.

Harvard came on the ice at full speed, forechecking ferociously and shooting with a mission: to test B.U.'s sophomore goalie, Mark Fennie. With each shot Fennie appeared closer to flunking. Pucks dribbled out of his glove into the crease and once he almost turned a shot from behind his own cage. He accidentally caught a slap shot by Chris Gurry between his legs, and twice benefited from the referees' quick whistles as the puck lay free in the crease.

At 8:07 a shot by Gurry deflected in off Fennie, but Barry spotted Harvard's Jack Turco inside the crease and the goal was disallowed.

The Terriers meanwhile made the most of their opportunities. At 4:52 Herb Wakabayashi lifted a lazy centering pass from Serge Boily into the goal's upper left corner. At 17:42 Larry Davenport took Billy Hinch's pass from the point and scored with a quick, power-play back-hander. A minute later Hinch's slap shot was deflected past the screened Crimson goalie, epitomizing the tragic injustice of the evening.

Ron Mark put Harvard on the scoreboard three minutes into the second period, climaxing a barrage from the crease by Kent Parrot and Pete Mueller.

But B.U. lifted its lead to 5-1, when a defensive mixup gave Terrier Mickey Gray a clean shot that fought through Bill Dierck's pads into the net and defenseman Darrell Abbott slid a screen shot through three sets of legs into the goal.

George McManama capped another scramble with a goal at 14:20 and four minutes later Parrot engineered the lead down to 5-3. The senior center, whose stickhandling solved the Terrier defense on several occasions, banked a shot off Fennie's pads to Mark, who banged home his second goal.

The story of the third period was previewed midway through the second when referee Barry watched Boily attack Harvard's Chip Otness without batting an eyelash. Barry let Boily stay on the ice and then penalized them both when Boily let loose immediately following the next faceoff.

Four minutes into the third period B.U. defenseman Abbott violated the cardinal ethic of sports by pinning goalie Diercks against his own cage, and Barry responded by penalizing Diercks for slashing and added a ten-minute misconduct when Ben Smith banged his stick against the boards in disbelieving frustration.

Smith got out of the cooler in time for Barry's major promotion of the evening. Terrier defenseman Hinch planted his elbow in Bob Fredo's face and when Barry was nonplussed he used the tactic on three more Crimson skaters. Everyone in the full house saw a fight was brewing except the referees, and at 16:30 it exploded.

Smith, the major winner of the bench-emptying donnybrook, ended by having his season-total of penalty minutes tripled in a single period. B.U.'s Mike Hyndman, who shed his uniform for greater punch- ing freedom, was disqualified along with Smith.

The game was hard-hitting, but so was the team's last meeting, in which only four penalties resulted. Barry and Fitzgerald for whom recent years have added more in the way of weight than ability, simply lost control of the game.

In other ECAC first-round action, Cornell beat Princeton, 6-1, Clarkson beat Brown, 7-3, and Boston College upset St. Lawrence, 7-6 in overtime