“I think a lot of the credit today—taking nothing away from the running backs—is that the offensive line played extremely well,” Murphy said. “I mean, we always say it’s what’s up front that counts on both sides of the ball, and if you control the line of scrimmage, you’re going to win a lot of games. And if you don’t—and we didn’t last week—then you’re in trouble.”

Defensively, Harvard contained a Princeton offense that has been struggling all season. The Tigers average 269 total offensive yards per game compared to their opponents’ 388 yards. Saturday was no different, as Princeton mustered only 157 yards compared with the Crimson’s 457.

A large part of the Tigers’ offensive misgivings this season has resulted from Jordan Culbreath’s recent diagnosis of aplastic anemia. Culbreath has 1551 career rushing yards and has been lynchpin of the Princeton offense in recent years.

But with Culbreath out, the Harvard D had little difficulty controlling the pace of the game.

“They prepared well for us last year, they ran all over us, and we made it a point as a defense to get in and make sure we prepare well, make sure we come out and play it well, all out, leave everything on the field,” said senior linebacker Jon Takamura, who led the defense with eight tackles, including four solo and one for a loss.

But as much as the Crimson had everything clicking on Saturday, Murphy still expects more from his team.

“As happy as we are beating a rival, getting a good win, being still in control of our own destiny in the league, we still made too many mistakes,” Murphy said. “We play like a young team sometimes, and we can get away with that maybe in the first couple of games as an alibi, but there’s no excuses for it. We’ve got to tighten things up. We’ve got a long way to go as far as I’m concerned.”

—Staff writer Dixon McPhillips can be reached at fmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.