Anytime Harvard and Princeton meet it’s always a big deal, but it’s going to be quite a festive atmosphere inside historic Harvard Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

That’s because the legend himself, former head coach Tim Murphy is being recognized prior to the game in a celebration of his 30 years leading the Crimson. His classic camouflage hat with the Harvard ‘H’ on it will be given out to the first 5,000 fans in attendance.

Not only that, but this will be Andrew Aurich’s first time coaching against his alma mater as head coach of the rival Crimson.

Before looking ahead to Princeton, Aurich took a moment to reflect on the wild game against Holy Cross during his weekly appearance on the ‘Inside Harvard Football’ podcast.

“It was a very stressful game, but a lot of fun,” Aurich said. “There was so much good stuff that went on out there in all three phases and also stuff we can learn from as we move forward. But, as I reflect back, the biggest takeaway is we’re definitely getting battle tested as the season continues here.

“When you get into those (close games), guys start doing wacky stuff and don’t trust their training and stay focused. We’re going to be prepared for that if and when that that happens at some point later in the season.”

As for what the game will mean, Aurich has a job to worry about and hasn’t had a whole lot of time to think about it, but he’s hoping to clearly portray the Tigers’ perspective to his players and staff.

This one means more than some people may realize.

“Princeton considers Harvard a big time rival,” he said. “What they call it at Princeton is ‘The Big 3 Championship.’ If you can beat Harvard and Yale in the same season, they call it ‘you won the Big 3 Championship’ and they have a big bonfire at the end of the season every year. I mentioned it to Coach Lamb and he’d never heard that. It’s strictly a Princeton thing. They look at Harvard, Yale and Princeton a certain way as this grouping of schools.

“There’s definitely an added motivation for those players down there because of that, for sure. I obviously know the program very well. I know a lot of the coaches there really well. As far as emotions go, it hasn’t really affected me much because, that’s the beauty of Ivy League football. You’re always onto the next week. I wasn’t really able to think about this game until Holy Cross ended.

“So, there wasn’t a lot of reflection other than like, digging in and seeing…’alright, what are they doing offensively? How similar is it to when I was there?’ Let me go back and look at my notes about the defense there having gone against them so many times over the eight years I was there. Let’s see if there’s anything I can do as the head coach to help out.”

As always, the Ivy League is wide open again. It’s a race to the finish and the Crimson look to keep pace on Friday with a legend in the building.

“It’s going to be a fun next five weeks,” added Aurich. “It makes every game every week so important. Not that we wouldn’t prepare to be 1-0 every week anyways, but we don’t have to talk about it.

“They know what’s on the line.”