Last night, the Harvard men's hockey team needed a break.

A goal.

A hero.

Down 3-2 with 53 seconds remaining in its ECAC semifinal game against Clarkson, the Crimson huddled on the bench.

And despite its 18 league wins and regular season ECAC title, Harvard was desperate.

The Crimson needed something. Someone.

"It was only a one-goal game," Harvard Captain Scott Fusco said. "All we needed was one play."

But with the clock winding down, the Crimson couldn't get a break and couldn't score.

Harvard needed a hero and couldn't find one.

And Clarkson won, 4-2.

The Knights are on their way to the tournament final. And the Crimson--the favorite to wrest the ECAC tournament crown for the first time since 1983--is in the consolation game.

But if only for a break with 53 seconds left...

"We felt we could do it," Harvard defenseman Jerry Pawloski said. "We just couldn't get a bounce. It kept going the other way."

In those 53 seconds, Clarkson flung the puck to the untended Harvard end of the rink three times.

And each time, a Crimson player had to skate the length of the rink, scoop up the puck and bring it back.

And the final assault with six skaters--goalie Grant Blair had been pulled with less than a minute left--began anew.

But if only for a goal with 53 seconds left...

"I still felt we could have tucked one in," defennseman Randy Taylor said. "But they played well."

But those six Crimson skaters--Lane MacDonald, Tim Barakett, Allen Bourbeau, Taylor, Pawloski and Fusco--couldn't put the puck past Knight goalie Jamie Falle, who stopped 10 shots in the final period to give his fifth-seeded club a stunning upset.

And it was Knight forward Luciano Borsato who charged down to the Harvard end with four seconds left in the game, stole the puck from Fusco and slipped a shot into the open net to assure Clarkson a spot in the 9 p.m. contest today.

But if only for a hero with 53 seconds left...

Meanwhile, Fusco lay with his face in the ice.

In the same game against the same team last year, Fusco had knocked in a goal with less than a minute left to give the Crimson a 2-1 triumph and a berth in the tournament final.

But he couldn't repeat the magic this year.

"I would like to have done it," Fusco said. "But it doesn't happen every time."

He had chances.

With 11 minutes left in the contest, Fusco drove from deep in his own end to within five feet of the Knight net.

He tried to slip a shot under Falle's pads but the senior netminder sent the puck skidding away.

Bourbeau might have grabbed the glory too.

He took a long pass from defenseman Don Sweeney with six minutes left in the game, drove down the center of the ice and faked Falle out of position.

But Bourbeau didn't have a good handle on the puck and his shot missed its mark.

"I was just hoping I'd stop them," Falle said of the two breakaways. "On the first, he didn't really get a good shot off and on the other, he missed the net."

But with 53 seconds left, anything seemed possible.

A break.

A goal.

A hero.

"We had to come out playing hard or we knew we'd be packing," forward Tim Smith said.

And after 53 seconds, the Crimson was packing.