For the present at least, the party is over. Harvard's suddenly super soccer team took on a Princeton squad that was, in a word, superior, and ended up on the wrong end of a 4-1 decision on the Business School field Saturday morning.

The problem boiled down to this--the Crimson offense simply lacked the ammunition to penetrate the rock-like Princeton defensive line, while the explosive Tiger offense proved too much for goalkeeper Fred Herold and the Harvard defense to contain.

The home booters fought valiantly through the opening period, however, playing the visitors fairly evenly for the opening half hour. Then the dam broke.

With a little more than 33 minutes gone, Harvard committed the dangerous sin of fouling a Princeton player near the goal area. After Tiger halfback Charlie Stillitano chipped the free kick over Harvard's defensive wall from 25 yards out, second-leading all-time Princeton scorer Paul Milone slipped past the fullbacks, drew a bead on the bottom right corner of the net, and rifled a shot past the helpless Herold.

Herold did not help his own cause when, just 49 seconds later, he let a ball slip off his chest, presenting Tiger Rick Raber with an open net scoring opportunity that he was more than glad to accept.

If the game's outcome had favored Harvard, the Crimson would be in the thick of the Ivy race, but in less than a minute, the match had turned sour.

Given that the Princeton defense owns a goals-against average of less than one, the halftime outlook assumed bleak proportions.

Allan Marshall made it even bleaker with 19:20 gone in the second period, driving home a loose ball following a brilliant, leaping save by Herold.

But this Harvard team is no group to hunker down and accept a shellacking. Crafty forward Lee Nelson beat a pair of defensemen at 27:08 and beat Princeton's talented goalkeeper, Guy Cipriano, with a shot from just inside the penalty area.

"We were too late trying to play the long ball for a while," Nelson said after the game, "but that didn't work since they had two or three guys back all the time. Towards the end we started working through them, but we just didn't see it soon enough."

Scott Addis cemented the Princeton victory with Tiger goal number four late in the game, putting a damper on the party the surprise team (4--1--3 before the game) has enjoyed thus far in 1977.

But that's not to say that the festivities won't resume in the near future. The Crimson takes on Williams Tuesday, then travels to Providence Saturday for an Ivy contest against always-tough Brown. A win there could make it party-time all over again.