ITHACA, N.Y.--A three-event circus took center stage at Lynah Rink Saturday night.

The first part was the pre-game show, the annual tradition of 4100 Cornell fans covering their faces with newspapers as the Harvard hockey team was introduced and screaming wildly as their own team's starters, one by one, skated to center ice and kicked up a spray of snow in the visitors' direction. Big Red defenseman Mike Schafer added a special flourish, cracking his stick over his helmet and shaking the pieces furiously at the Crimson.

"It's a big show," Harvard Coach Bill Cleary said later, "and if he wants to do that, that's his choice. I hope his head's all right."

As if the preliminaries weren't wild enough, Acts II and III, after the faceoff, were even more bizarre. Harvard won the opener, a seven-minute blitzkrieg, 4-0. Cornell won the finale, a 53-minute melodrama, 6-1.

It goes in the books as 6-5, yet another Cornell win over Harvard in Ithaca.

The decision snapped a five-game losing streak for the home team, and it marked the eighth time in the last 11 years Cornell has beaten Harvard at Lynah.

"Anytime you beat those bastards [it's a big win]," said Cornell Coach Lou Reycroft.

Defense Department Ties

For a while, though, even the Big Red faithful seemed ready to concede this year's showdown to the visitors. They were silenced by the very first Crimson rush, as Dave Connors sprinted along the sideboards and set up Phil Falcone in front of the net for the initial tally.

Harvard put three more pucks behind freshman goalie Don Fawcett in the next few minutes. The fault lay mostly with the Big Red defenders, who couldn't skate with the speedy Crimson. Falcone easily slipped through the Cornell defense, stacked at the blue line, to set up Connors for the second score.

Fawcett was taken by surprise when freshman defenseman Butch Cutone took a sharp angle slapshot from the sideboards for the third goal.

A minute later, stick-breaker Schafer was to blame, as Gary Martin burned him to take the assist from Connors for their line's third goal of the still-young evening.

That was enough for Reycroft. A time out and a goalie switch--freshman Jim Edmands replacing Fawcett--and it was a completely new game. "They were a whole different team," said Connors, "and we were, too."

The Big Red descended on the Harvard zone instantly. Shot, save, rebound, Shot, save, rebound. Shot, score, as left wing Paul Marcov lifted a backhander from two feet away. It took 12 seconds.

Little more than four minutes later, center Gary Cullen's pass from behind the net banked off Crimson netreminder Grant Blair's pads into the goal. Suddenly, the runaway had turned into a real contest.