December 2, 2013

Page 1

The Chronicle T h e i n d e p e n d e n t d a i ly at D u k e U n i v e r s i t y

monday, december 2, 2013

www.dukechronicle.com

ONE HUNDRED AND ninth YEAR, Issue 58

kings of the coastal

KEVIN SHAMIEH/The Chronicle

27 DUKE

UNC 25

A season of growth comes full circle by Daniel Carp The Chronicle

ERIC LIN/The Chronicle

Redshirt freshman DeVon Edwards returned a kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown, giving Duke a huge momentum swing.

CHAPEL HILL—Eight games ago, it did not look like a trip to the ACC championship game was even going to be in the realm of possibility for Duke. With starting quarterback Anthony Boone sitting on the sidelines nursing a broken collarbone, the Blue Devils fell to Pittsburgh 58-55 in front of a sparse home crowd at Wallace Wade Stadium. Duke allowed nearly 600 yards of total offense in that Sept. 21 game as a late comeback attempt fell short. The loss dropped the Blue Devils to 2-2 on the season. Boone had no timetable for his return, and the Duke defense looked every bit as porous as the group that allowed 49.2 points per game in a five-game losing skid to end the 2012 season. It was the type of loss that could send an otherwise-promising season spiraling out of control. The opposite happened—more than two months later, the Blue Devils have not lost since.

“That’s when it really settled in for me that we have a great team,” redshirt senior cornerback Ross Cockrell said. “Even with all the ups and downs in that game, a lot of negative things happened for us. Defensively, we gave up a ton of big plays, but we fought to the very end of that game—a game we should have been out of, I think.” Despite all the negative takeaways on both sides of the ball, Cockrell said it was his team’s loss to the Panthers that showed the physicality and resilience that has led the team on its current eight-game winning streak. “I was talking to [head coach David Cutcliffe] after that game, and I said, ‘Even after all the bad things that happened to us, we still were only three points away,’” Cockrell said. “And that’s when I think I knew that we had a special team and that we had a special season ahead of us.” Slowly but surely, the Blue Devils built the pieces it would need to take the Coastal See football, page 8

ByTheNumbers 1

Duke advances to the conference title game for the first time ever, and becomes the first Triangle team to make an ACC championship game appearance.

10

Victories for Duke this year, becoming the first Blue Devil team to record 10 wins in program history.

8

The Blue Devils will head into next week’s ACC championship game riding an eight-game winning streak, the team’s longest since 1941.

4-0

Duke’s record in November this year. In head coach David Cutcliffe’s first five seasons, the Blue Devils were a combined 1-19 in the season’s final month.

10-0

Quarterback Anthony Boone’s career record as a starter. He is the first Duke quarterback in program history to win each of his first 10 starts.


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