Duke is coming off its first victory and many, including optimistic fans, members of the media and even some odds makers are expecting the Blue Devils to ride that wave to a victory Saturday.
Duke returns home after a road victory (Duke's first) last week. But Wallace Wade holds ghosts of should have won games past.
All of the above had better watch out or it will be a wave of mutilation in Durham.
Vegas odds makers have Duke as a 10-point favorite, ESPN’s ACC Blogger Heather Dinich predicts Duke to win 38-24, despite the fact that Duke’s offense hasn’t even come close to scoring that many points this season.
And despite an impressive performance last week from quarterback Sean Renfree, the Blue Devils can expect to get Tulane (2-1) best shot on Saturday.
Duke comes in beat up and with some critical injuries potentially keeping some key players out of the game. Duke is still listing running backs Desmond Scott, and Josh Snead as out. Center Brian Moore is out as well, but starting corner Ross Cockrell is listed as questionable.
That isn’t a good sign for a young defense. Fellow corner Tony Foster is listed as probable but Cockrell is clearly the best corner and Tulane who features a pretty decent quarterback in Ryan Griffin who has already thrown for 718 passing yards and six touchdowns.
He helped lead Tulane to a 49-10 victory over UAB last week.
The Green Wave’s defense isn’t too shabby either having already racked up 10 sacks and five interceptions through the first three games, so Duke’s offensive line has to protect Renfree who took some serious hits against Boston College last week.
Duke may on paper look like the better team and they very well may be the better team, but they have to play like the better team and those are two very different things.
The Blue Devils have failed to live up to the potential for a whole game all year. Their offense is ranked 103 in FBS level play in points scored at only 18.3 per game.
For Duke to have any shot at scoring the kind of points Dinich predicts them to score, they are going to have to get something from the ground game as well as Renfree’s arm.
Also the offense, if they manage to get there, will have to score in the redzone. Redzone woes have been the story of the offense all year and with kicker Will Snyderwine questionable with an ankle injury, it will need to score touchdowns because field goals will be tenuous at best with walk-on senior Jeffery Ijjas most likely to be the g0-t0 place kicker.
Duke has no room for error. That isn’t to say they have little room, they in fact have no room to make mistakes because they just aren’t good enough. The victory against Boston College was luck, and while Duke may be better than Tulane is, they can’t rely on luck to win and if they do, they will lose.
Prediction
Tulane 32- Duke 28
As happy as we at the Duke Sports Blog were with the Blue Devil’s victory last week and has optimistic as we’d like to be it is hard to pick Duke in any situation.
Week one did us in as far as picking the Blue Devils to be favored, but that in and of itself isn’t why we are picking against them. Duke is beat up and too many question marks in terms of personnel.
No kicker, best corner questionable, and no running game has us thinking Tulane will get the job done in a close game.
Renfree will be asked to do too much, the defense won’t be able to hold out and too many mistake will cost Duke another game they could, should, but just won’t win.
We hope we are wrong but after Richmond forgive us if we are too gun shy to believe in Duke when they are the favorite. We’ll have to see it for ourselves.
