NEW HAVEN, Conn.--"Patience, patience," the Harvard men's basketball coaches kept urging during Saturday night's game at Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium, advising their charges to wait for an open shot.

But it's a long way from patience to control of the game tempo, and the Bulldogs used their superior quickness and anticipation to build up a 12-point lead about midway through the second half and then hung on for a 76-67 Ivy League win.

And so, in this most bizarre season, Yale remains tied with Brown--which beat Dartmouth Saturday night--for the league lead, with both squads sporting 4-1 marks. Harvard, at 2-3, is in seventh place, with the crucial Princeton-Penn weekend coming up. With 11 games to go, no team is out of it, especially with the Tigers and Quakers both at 3-2, and set to play both Brown and Yale on their home courts later this month.

Saturday's Harvard-Princeton match up at the IAB is thus crucial for both teams, and NBC will feature it as its ECAC Game of the Week. To accommodate the television plans, the starting time has been pushed back to 1 p.m. If you want a seat for the big event, make the trip up to the top of the IAB early.

In an attempt to set the pace in Saturday's game, the Crimson whipped the ball around the perimeter before every shot, displaying admirable patience, but at times seeming hesitant to take the open shot.

The Crimson defense, meanwhile, looked nothing short of pathetic, failing to control the aspics of Yale guard Bunch Graves, who led all scorers with 26 points. The 6-ft., 3-in. sophomore tossed in nine of ten attempts from the floor, and converted eight of nine from the foul line.

Still, the two teams played evenly for most of the first half, which ended with Yale up by three, 29-26. Harvard led by one, 22-21, with about six minutes to go in the first half, but then lost whatever control it had maintained up to that point, and failed to put in a shot from the field for the rest of the half.

The Harvard ice-age--the Crimson shot a whopping 39 percent in the first 20 minutes--continued for much of the second installment, and Yale went ahead by and even dozen, 48-36, with about ten minutes to go.

The Crimson then found its offensive touch, scoring on ten straight possessions to narrow the gap to six with 1:49 to go. Crimson captain Donald Fleming and freshman guard Kevin Boyle then collaborated on a steal, giving Harvard the ball and a chance to pull to within four.

The charm wore off, though, when Kyle Stanley, who was playing alongside Boyle in the back court, missed a pair of free throws to end the Harvard rally.