Never Question Butch Davis
Y’all have probably seen this before, but what the hell. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
All posts by Vernal Coleman
Snore (Virginia Tech 14, Duke 3)
The word “ugly” doesn’t begin to describe this one.
Virginia Tech and Duke’s respective offensive squads discovered new levels of ineptitude Saturday, playing in a contest so boring that it made even the perpetually-raucous Hokie faithful go listless.
For its part, VaTech surrendered five turnovers in the first six possessions, a feat that would have likely doomed them had they been playing Duke, who managed just 134 total yards of offense in the 14-3 loss, thereby extending the losing streak to a robust six games.
Here’s how it happened:
The Duke v. N.C. State Liveblog
And so it has come to this; The best—and most schizophrenic—Duke team in maybe 15 years is but one win away from being Bowl eligible. Standing in their way this afternoon is the N.C. State Wolfpack, the fans of which have traveled en masse to Wallace Wade Stadium today, infecting everyone and everything with their post-Phillip Rivers disenchantment. Duke winning this one depends on which team shows up, the mistake-prone slow starters or the one that went tit-for-tat with Wake Forest’s prolific offense. This is, however, a rivalry game, the cliche being that anything is possible, anything can happen, etc. The battle for a second-tier bowl begins…now.
There are no moral victories: Miami 49, Duke 31
Standing on the sideline at Wallace Wade stadium Saturday, I watched Miami’s Matt Bosher get off the best punt I have ever seen, a booming 76-yard kick in the third quarter that left the 32, 011 on hand for the game momentarily silent and the Blue Devil return men scrambling to catch up as the ball sailed overhead. Coach David Cutcliffe would later call this the play of the day. And while it’s unusual for a punt to be singled out in such a way, it wasn’t at all surprising.
Prior to Bosher’s kick, the game was Duke’s. Deft play-calling and solid rushing by committee members Jackson, Harris and Hollingsworth had given the normally slow-starting Blue Devils an early lead. Led by Mike Tauiliili, the front seven had managed to keep Miami’s youngish but potent offense playing on their heels. But then Bosher tilted the field in the Hurricanes favor, pinning the Blue Devils on their own 11 yard line. It would not tilt back.
Duke’s O sputtered on the ensuing drive. Six plays later, Miami took the lead on a six yard TD pass by precocious redshirt freshman quarterback Jacory Harris. And thus the rout began.
The 49-31 loss leaves Duke with a record of 3-3 heading into next week’s game against Vanderbilt, a team that seems to be staging their own football renaissance. Conference wise, Duke is now 1-2, which is good enough at this point in the season to join the Wolfpack and the Tar Heels in the ACC cellar. So given that, what do we think of the Blue Devils? Much of what I’ve written in this space has been an attempt to determine what progress looks like for a program like Duke’s. Six games in to the season, I’m not any closer to doing so than when I started.
To be sure, Duke lost this game. A second half chocked full of costly penalties, missed opportunities and dropped passes doomed them, making this perhaps more troubling than beatdown by Georgia Tech. There Duke lost by virtue of the athleticism gap. On Saturday, the team simply unraveled against an ACC rival that was ripe for an upset. That does not bode well, which is not to say that the season is lost, I mean, I’ll bury no body before its time, but whatever momentum Duke had following its win against Virginia is at this point a memory. And, as previously stated, there are no more gimmes left on the Blue Devil’s schedule.
What does progress look like for this long beleaguered program? I’m still not sure, the expectations keep on moving. What’s more, this is but the first year of the David Cutcliffe era. But if the team is to retain the attention of its fledging fan base, if the new coaching staff hopes to attract the caliber of talent that will enable the Blue Devils to beat teams that are actually worth a damn, than it’s going to need to show some, and soon.
The worst team in the ACC is not named the Blue Devils…
Other than that, there aren’t many conclusions to be drawn from Saturday’s 31-3 victory over Virginia—just more questions.
The Blue Devils have quietly managed to climb out of the ACC cellar, but have done so by stepping on the piled carcasses of inferior and failing programs. They picked up their first conference win in 26 tries Saturday, but left the defense to do the heavy lifting while Thaddeus Lewis and the rest of the Duke offense again struggled through the first half. Final stats show that Duke was outperformed in nearly every quantifiable aspect of the game, and before Michael Tauiliili and the rest of the Blue Devil defense harassed Cavalier Quarterback Marc Verica into a second half meltdown, the outcome could have gone either way. And yet Duke won, convincingly.
“We made a lot of mistakes that good teams don’t make,” said David Cutcliffe at the post-game press conference, “But I’m extremely proud of our guys for doing what they needed to do to win.”
So, the Blue Devils are no longer a doormat, but are they any good?
The truth won’t begin to shake out until next week as Duke continues its long march through conference play which, N.C. State notwithstanding, sees them pitted against the class of the ACC.
Ouch
Forrest will have reaction to today’s UNC win a bit later. In the meantime, succumb to your inner 10-year-old and enjoy the day’s best de-cleater:
Upon further review
Duke football is idle this week, leaving your friendly correspondent ample time to scour the Internets for a reason to question his previous assertions about the state of Duke football.
Enter the North Carolina Business Litigation Report (NCBLR).
You may have heard recently that the legal wrangling between Duke and the University of Louisville has come to a close. Louisville filed suit in 2007 after Duke opted out of playing the final three games of a series that was scheduled to run through 2009. Earlier this summer, Judge Phillip J. Shepherd of the Franklin County Circuit Court ruled that the Cardinals were entitled to bubkiss.
How, you ask, were Duke’s lawyers able to convince a Kentucky judge to rule in their favor?
By stating the obvious, silly.
Conjecture, thy name is Vernal. (Also, Duke is 2-1)
Take notice Blue Devil nation, it may very well be that your football team—by ACC standards at least—does not suck. True, their only wins have come by way of teams who either played seemingly without the benefit of a secondary (Navy), or who were altogether lacking of a pulse (James Madison). And it’s also true that the offensive fireworks and final 41-31 score do mask what was an otherwise sloppy game. That said, it’s customary for teams to fill out the early portion of the season with twinkies, creampuffs and other easily digested confectioneries; all the better to work out the kinks before getting to the meat of the schedule. David Cutcliffe, who some are calling the first legit coach Duke has had in years, knows this, or rather, this is something I’d expect a legit coach to know.
Whatever. Thaddeus Lewis—he of ACC player-of-the-week fame—scorched the aforementioned porous Navy pass defense to the tune of 317 yards. Under Cutcliffe’s tutelage, the still rawly talented Lewis seems to be blossoming. That and the fact that the team is now in the business of breaking losing streaks (Note: The Midshipmen have taken four of the last five contests.) rather than starting them should I think give the fan base reason to be cautiously optimistic about the team’s prospects.
So to those 10 or so thousand Dukies that did not show up to Wallace Wade Stadium on Saturday, and to the ones who did but fled for cooler locales after the first quarter, I’ll say this: Get happy. There are no gimmes on the schedule, and the road to the Orange Bowl (Yeah, I said it.) only gets tougher from here.
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