The game ended, appropriately, with the Harvard football team unable to do anything. The Crimson had used all its timeouts and could only watch as Boston University ran out the clock, clinging to a 24-23 victory Saturday at The Stadium.

Harvard had been on the low end of the score five times this year, but Saturday's game offered its own cruel blend of hope and disappointment. Down 21-0 late in the second quarter, the Crimson rallied to close the gap to one point with 3:42 left in the game when quarterback Rod MacLeod dove into the endzone from the two-yd. line.

Harvard Coach Joe Restic elected to have his offense try a two-point conversion. But MacLeod's pass, intended for tight end Don Gajewski, was intercepted by Terrier safety Mike White.

The Crimson stopped B.U. on the next two plays. But facing third and long, Terrier QB Jim Shuman lobbed a pass over the middle which Sean Munroe snagged and carried to midfield. The Terriers used their next four plays to run out the clock.

"It's the kind of game you want to have," Restic said. "Right down to the end it could have gone either way...We had Gajewski open. We just didn't get the ball out far enough."

Saturday's game was closer than most the Crimson has played this year. But it had a familiar result. Just another despairing page in the Crimson's diary.

"This game is going to bring us down, definitely," said running back Jim Reidy, the Crimson's leading rusher (76 yards on 10 carries) and receiver (97 yards on four catches) Saturday. "I hope we can rebound from it, forget about it."

Harvard, last year's Ivy League champion, dropped out of the title race two weeks ago after losing to Princeton. The Crimson is in position to influence who wears the crown. Harvard will face the University of Pennsylvania (5-0 Ivy League) next Saturday in Philadelphia.

But the role of spoiler is not appealing.

"It's tough," Reidy said. "We're 2-6. I don't think beating Penn and Yale [November 19] will salvage our season. I think it would make the off-season a little easier to bear."

Many experts picked Harvard to repeat its Ivy League championship this season. The experts pointed out that the Crimson had 11 returning starters from the 1987 championship team, including quarterback Tom Yohe and running back Tony Hinz. Saturday, Yohe (fractured leg) and Hinz (broken hand) were on the sidelines.

But Harvard had problems even with Yohe and Hinz in the lineup. With the dynamic duo, Harvard was 1-5.

In the Ivy League, the difference between a winning and losing season is not great. Take Harvard's year. Two bad snaps (Cornell, October 8), a lethargic start (Dartmouth, October 15) and two interceptions and a fumble (Princeton, October 22) were all a champion needed to become an ex-champion.

Saturday, a failed two-point conversion was all that kept Harvard from winning.

"I was glad we stuck in there to the end," Harvard Captain Don Peterson said. "I liked the fact that we went for a two-point play instead of going for a tie...[Missing the conversion] epitomizes the season. We played well, just not well enough to win."