The strong defensive effort all year wasn’t always in full force. The team had a number of games when it struggled, including a 41-31 win over Cornell and 56-39 victory over Princeton two weeks later.
Even in the last three weeks, the Crimson has trailed in all three games. But Harvard still managed to win those contests against Columbia, Penn, and Yale by a combined margin of 117-48.
“[Saturday] was such a balanced effort,” Murphy said. “Really got a great effort from and execution out of our special teams, and defensively, the last two weeks, those are probably the best back-to-back defensive games we’ve played in a long time.”
After one successful drive from Bulldog quarterback Patrick Witt in the first quarter, Harvard shut down the former Rhodes Scholarship finalist. Witt was intercepted three times, and Yale never got closer to the Crimson end zone than the 30-yard line in the second half.
BIG DAY FOR JOSUE
In a two-week period, senior defensive tackle Josue Ortiz has earned and presented two different rings.
Against Penn, Ortiz led the team with 10 tackles and two sacks to help Harvard clinch the Ancient Eight title outright.
And this week, he made big news—and SportsCenter—when he proposed to his girlfriend, Kayci Baldwin’14, at the end of the game.
It may be his most memorable moment in a Harvard football uniform, but it might not be his most impressive. Ortiz capped his career with a sack in Saturday’s game, his 10th this season—meeting his preseason goal—bolstering his candidacy for Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year.
Senior defensive tackle Matt Lunati was second on the team in sacks with 2.5.
Ortiz is one of a handful of current Crimson seniors attracting NFL attention, though the defensive tackle only came onto the scene after a breakout 2010. Throughout this season, Ortiz was regularly double-teamed but still finished the year leading the league in sacks. He fell just short of breaking the all-time single-season sacks record for Harvard.
“It’s been great. For me and Josue, for five years we’ve been able to beat Yale,” Winters said. “It’s been awesome, and a great way to go out and to go out on top for us.”
—Staff writer E. Benjamin Samuels can be reached at samuels@college.harvard.edu.