Make no mistake, Harvard wasn't perfect, but it survived because it minimized the impact of its mistakes, sometimes by luck, sometimes by increasing its defensive pressure.

After scoring its first touchdown of the afternoon, a high snap on the extra point forced a failed attempt at a two-point conversion, which left the Crimson out a point.

Tiger senior placekicker Alex Sierk gave the point back at the end of the second half when he flubbed the point-after off a perfectly good snap, booming his try off the left upright.

"Special teams: unfortunately, we missed a field goal, we missed an extra point," Princeton Coach Steve Tosches said. "They're three equal parts. You play hard offensively and defensively, but as you can see, a couple of plays on the special teams make a difference."

On two drives in the fourth quarter, the Crimson defense provided crucial stops. With 5:01 remaining, junior safety Aron Natale collected a coverage sack of Burnham on second down to force a third-and-17 and an eventual punt.

Late in the fourth quarter, Linden's fumbled third-and-10 snap from the shotgun led to excellent field position for the Tigers at their own 42-yard line with 2:26 to play.

After a critical offsides penalty pushedPrinceton into a first-and-15 at midfield, juniorsafety Ben Green came up with a game-winningtakeaway, intercepting a badly overthrown ballfrom Burnham at the Harvard 27 to preserve aone-point lead.

"We don't have the weapons we had last year,and anybody who watches us on a regular basis cansee that," Murphy said. "We've become a veryresilient, mentally tough football team, andbasically, we've played extremely well in thefourth quarter and second halves of the last threegames."

The Crimson allowed only three Princeton pointsin the fourth quarter and only 27 rushing yards,this after Tiger running backs Derek Thiesen andDamien Taylor had burned them for 156 on 19carries in the first half.

Throughout, Harvard played, if not perfect, atleast smart football, converting when it had toand turning it up a notch defensively with firstplace on the line. Murphy summed it up well:

"We talked about having a lot of poise today,"he said. "Not only win the war, but also ace theexam. We didn't have very many missed assignments,penalties. We had zero turnovers, zero offensivepenalties. That's the only way we could havebeaten Princeton today."

If it was the only way, credit is due theCrimson for finding it. And not only did itsfootball credentials improve monumentally onSaturday, but the smarts it exhibited might makeit that much more attractive to all thoserecruiters.

At this rate, we'll have enough money for a newstadium of our own before long