DULUTH, MINN-The Harvard men's hockey team closed out its season March 22 and 23 at the University of Minnesota-Duluth (UMD), dropping a pair of 4-2 decision to the NCAA quarterfinals.

The Crimson (21-9-2) completed a season in which it shocked pundits and itself by claming second place in the ECAC and earning an NCAA tournament bid with some of its finest hockey of the year.

Nonetheless, the Bulldogs proved too strong in front of highly partisan crowds of 5639-the 23rd and 24th consecutive sellouts-at the Duluth Arena

UMD went on to finished third in the tournament, after losing to eventual champion RPI 65 in triple overtime Friday night at Detroit's joe I ouis Arena Duluth topped Boston Collage, 7-6, in the consolation Saturday afternoon

Thursday, Providence beat B.C 4-3 in another triple overtime game. The tournament's Cinderella team which had beaten top-seeded Michigan State in East Lansing, Mich., in the NCAA quarters, fell to the Engineers, 2-1 in Saturday's final.

Ther was, however, no such fairy tale ending for the East's third-seeded Crimson squad, which lost to the West's second seed

Although UMD boats some of the top forwards in the country, including Bill Watson, who scored over a 100 points this year and picked up the 1985 Hobey Baker Award Saturday, the two crucial scores of the two-game total goals series came from a pair of Duluth defenseman

After the Crimson took a 2-1 lead early in the second period Friday night on Tim Smith and Bulldogs came back with three unanswered Scores. After Watson tied the game with his 47th goal at the 3:47 mark and Norm Maciver gave the host the lead less

than two minutes later, than two teams played even down the stretch

Harvard's Rick Haney, a product of Duluth East High School, was whistled for a questionable hooking penalty at 16:33 of the final period, and the potent UMD power play notched a crucial score

Defnseman Jim Johnson, filling in on an extra-man unit that normally boats five skaters with at least 58 points got his first powers play goal of the year, when Watson fed the senior in the right wing circle from behind the net

The score gave UMD a two-goal lead, which meant that the Crimson had to have its mind on more than just winning the second game.

Further, the game snapped junior Scott Fuso's consecutive game scoring streak at 29 games, three short of the ECAC record

Moreover Fuso, a Hobey Baker finalist and the ECAC player of the Year, played what may be the last two games of his collage career-depending on the kind of offer he gets from the Hartford Whalers this spring-with back pains that plagued him for last month.

Harvard opened up Saturday night with perhaps its finest period of the season. Just 30 seconds after the opening face-off, Smith poked home the second rebound of a Mark Benning slapshot from the point