BOSTON--Harvard's opening round Beanpot match against Boston College turned out to be the high-scoring, heavyweight bout no one thought would occur. B.C  7 Harvard  6

When the dust finally cleared, Harvard had suffered too many blows to the head, dropping a 7-6 decision to the Eagles.

Down 4-0, 5-1, 6-3 and 7-4 (the Crimson never had a lead in the game), Harvard continued to battle back from unheard-of odds, even after the sold-out Boston Garden crowd of 14,448 had begun to filter out starting at the end of the first period.

"It was a crazy game," Harvard Coach Ronn Tomassoni said. "On many occasions we could've quit after battling back, but we never did."

"B.C. did a good job all night of capitalizing on our mistakes, but we showed a lot of character coming back like we did," captain Ben Coughlin said.

Those mistakes repeatedly hounded Harvard, especially in a disastrous first period. Boston College only needed one shot to get on the board, coming nearly five minutes in.

Eagle forward Michael McCarthy flipped the puck over a sprawled Tripp Tracy, as the netminder tried to tip the puck away, and B.C. was off and running.

Two minutes later, on what would be the Eagles' third shot of the game, captain Ryan Haggarty corralled a long pass from Peter Masters and deked out Tracy for the 2-0 Boston College lead.

In a repeat performance of this past weekend's miscues, another giveaway in Harvard's defensive zone allowed Don Chase to increase the B.C. lead to 3-0. Chase's first attempt was thwarted, but the junior curled around the net to flip home the loose puck.

Harvard's nightmare was not over.

With 1:15 left in the first stanza, defenseman Greg Callahan received and tipped a cross-ice pass into the back of the net right after a face-off to puthis team up, 4-0.

Harvard could only generate one shot over thefinal 13 minutes of the first period on lastyear's Beanpot MVP--Eagle goalie Greg Taylor--andBC converted four of 10.

"We made four big boo-boos, and theycapitalized on all of them," Tomassoni said.

The Crimson seemed down for the count, and manyB.U. and North-eastern fans headed for the exits.But as chapters of a book can be quite dissimilar,the second period was a much different story.

Still, the missed opportunities weredevastating for the Crimson from then on: a coupleof flubbed open-net shots and three failedbreakaways all appeared to contribute to thefar-too-early departures of the Boston Gardenfaithful.Boston College, 7-6 at Boston Garden

B.C.  4  1  2  --7Harvard  0  3  3  --6