DURHAM, N.C. (AP) -Coaches usually steer clear of bringing up gambling lines, but that didn’t stop Duke’s David Cutcliffe from posing a rhetorical question about the Maryland game.
“Are we favored?” Cutcliffe asked. “Lord, have mercy.”
Somehow, the Blue Devils (3-3, 1-1) have gone from losers against a Championship Subdivision team to 5 1/2-point favorites against one of the Atlantic Coast Conference’s perennial bowl teams.
And with a week off to savor a surprising rout of North Carolina State and a few seemingly winnable games coming up – starting with this week’s visit from the Terrapins (2-5, 1-2) – perhaps a season that started with an embarrassing defeat against Richmond won’t wind up being a total loss after all.
‘t even close to that. They’re tough up front, they come off the ball hard, they’ve got some good kids on the edges and they know how to make plays. They’ve definitely got that going down there.”
The upcoming stretch against Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina – teams that are a combined 6-9 against Bowl Subdivision competition – could go a long way toward determining whether Cutcliffe’s bold declaration in July that “I believe we are a bowl team” was prescient or merely premature.
“We just feel like a team that has an opportunity,” quarterback Thaddeus Lewis said. “Either you capitalize on the opportunity, or you let it slip away. … We can either go forward, or we can fold. In the back of our minds, we’re just going to continue to work hard. I don’t think anybody’s cocky … but everybody is hungry, not content.”
Namely, Lewis.
Duke’s improved play of late has been accompanied by big numbers from the fourth-year starter, and that’s no coincidence. He threw for 359 yards in a closer-than-expected loss to nationally ranked Virginia Tech and followed that with career highs of 40 completions, 50 attempts, 459 yards and five passing touchdowns – while rushing for another score – in the 49-28 romp against the Wolfpack.
The best way to improve on that performance, Lewis said, is to “just forget about it.”
“You have to have short-term memory,” he added.
to have – especially after some of his early-season performances.
He was just 5 of 16 for 60 yards before giving way to redshirt freshman backup Sean Renfree in the Army win, and those two also split time the following week when Lewis threw his only two interceptions of the season during the lopsided loss at Kansas.
But the low point may have come in Week 1, when defending FCS champion Richmond was dominant in a 24-16 victory – the Spiders’ second in four years against Duke.
“The opener was probably more devastating to our team than maybe I even imagined,” Cutcliffe said. “They had been through a lot in camp, and to have something that negative happen that early … We had kind of a coming-together out here (at practice) that allowed us to play better versus Virginia Tech.
“That was the key … in creating belief. What I wanted them to believe in wasn’t so much that we could win or still be a bowl team, but that if you refocus and you absolutely put an enormous amount of hard work into something, you can get better.”
Since then, there have been other, equally significant improvements that led safety Catron Gainey to say: “I’ve kind of noticed us being on a climb.”
The offensive line, long a troublesome spot for a program that has long been forced incoming freshmen into early duty instead of redshirting them, has made strides that are noticeable, yet tough to quantify on a stat sheet. The defense has held its last four opponents to fewer than 155 yards rushing apiece.
And perhaps most importantly, the players don’t have to worry about whether their schemes are headed for the scrap heap before they’re fully understood – previously a problem for Lewis, who had different offensive coordinators in each of his first three years at Duke.
“Guys being comfortable, knowing what the coaches expect,” Lewis said. “Now, we know (the system is) not going to change. We’re going to run the same plays – probably tweak a little something here or there, run it out of a different formation, but we’re going to run the same plays, so you kind of know your assignments. So the thing is to go out and execute your assignment. … We’re not in a learning process anymore. We’re in a get-better process.”
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AP Sports Writer David Ginsburg in College Park, Md., contributed to this report.
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