There would be no more second-half mental lapses Saturday.

"When we came into the locker room at halftime, we were so hungry [to win]," Menick said after the game. "The whole attitude was that we were not going to let up. The offensive side and the defensive side of the locker room were yelling that we had to stay fired up and stay hungry."

The Harvard defense picked up its share of the slack, tightening the noose around the Dartmouth offense. Even though Big Green quarterback Brian Mann had had a career first half by completing 22-for-29 passes (15-of-16 in the first quarter), the Crimson secondary and the defensive line suffocated the dynamic Dartmouth offense.

Mann went 0-for-7 in the second half.

The Crimson, however, is still far from perfect. Penalties continue to plague Harvard this year, and even though kicker Mike Giampaolo connected on all nine of his extra-point

attempts, he missed a 46-yard kick at the beginning of the fourth quarter. And with both teams tied at seven, a penalty against Dartmouth nullified a momentum-shattering, fourth-and-4 Big Green fake punt that would have completely burned the Crimson.

But when Harvard needed to make big plays, it did--and as Murphy acknowledged after the Crimson's loss to Cornell, the team that can pull out the big plays is the team that wins the big games.