The Harvard hockey team laid its hands on a greasy watermelon last night.

Twice, the Crimson jumped to big leads in its ECAC Quarterfinal contest against RPI. Twice, Harvard let those leads slip away.

For Harvard, 4-0 and 5-2 were not big enough margins. The watermelon kept tumbling out of its hands. The Crimson kept swimming after it.

In the end, Harvard was able to hold on, 5-4, in front of 2344 spectators at Bright Center. But the chill lingered.

"We put them back in the game by sitting back," Harvard Captain Steve Armstrong said. "We went into a shell. When RPI wound up, we wound down."

Fortunately for the Crimson, so did the clock. When the gun went off, the puck lay on Harvard's goal line.

"As fate would have it the game ends with the puck in their crease," RPI Coach Mike Addesa said. "That says a lot there."

The Crimson (19-8 overall) will face the Engineers (15-16) again tonight in the conclusion of this quarterfinal series. If Harvard wins, it will advance to the ECAC Final Four next weekend in Boston Garden. If RPI wins, it will force Harvard into a 10-minute mini-game immediately following the end of the first contest.

"We want to avoid the mini-game," Devin said. "Anything can happen in a mini-game."

In last year's ECAC Quarterfinals, seventh-ranked RPI drew second-ranked Colgate into a mini-game, then won it, 2-0.

Last night, RPI looked like it might escape with a win in the series' opening game, despite the hole it dug for itself early on. Meanwhile, Harvard became the living embodiement of Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice," playing like the devil in the first period and then transforming into Mr. Freeze in the final 40 minutes.

"We didn't play well the last two periods," Harvard Coach Bill Cleary said. "We fell asleep. We went into a shell."

Early on it was RPI, the tortoise in this dual race, that went into a shell. And the Crimson hopped along fine.

The Harvard power-play, long an untrustworthy wheel on the Crimson's offensive carriage, clicked immediately last night.

With less than two minutes gone in the game,Peter Ciavaglia fed C.J. Young down low for a chipshot and a 1-0 lead. Young tallied again with sixminutes left in the period, rifling a ScottMcCormack rebound past RPI goalie Steve Duncan,who had shut out Harvard, 4-0, two weeks ago.