While there are many things from the past few weeks that football head coach Fred Goldsmith and the Blue Devils could focus on, Monday's press conference concentrated more on what might happen in the future than what has already taken place.
"In order to salvage this season and get things back on the right track, it has to start this game," said fifth-year senior Sidney Wells, Duke's current starter at left cornerback. "That would give us back a great amount of confidence which we may have lost through the first six games of the season."
Unfortunately for Duke, "this game" refers to a battle with the Virginia Cavaliers (5-2, 4-1 in the Atlantic Coast Conference). Even worse, the game takes place in Charlottesville. On top of that, the Cavaliers lost last week to North Carolina 22-17 and will be looking to show everyone in the nation that they are still among the cream of the crop in the ACC.
This hype surely does not need to be added to a game that is already considered one of the best rivalries in the conference, but not solely for good reasons.
"It's almost like a feud," Wells said. "As the generations go on, the generations in the feud forget why they're fighting. It's just a bitter hate that we have for one another. Once the Virginia ballgame comes up, it's time to put on the real game face, it's time to get ready, make the tape a little tighter, because it's going to be a tough ballgame."
It's hard to pick up exactly where the rivalry started, but there is no doubt that it has been most intense in the past few years. Two years ago, things went past the emotional level as the benches cleared in the fourth quarter of the game for a brawl which led to two players being ejected from each team.
The final score of 35-0 in favor of Virginia certainly did nothing to help Duke ease its hard feelings.
But revenge can be so sweet, as last year, the Blue Devils rebounded from a loss to Florida State by beating Virginia 28-25 to move to 8-1 on the season. This win was even sweeter as Virginia players had made comments about the validity of Duke's season throughout the year. "They're not a real 7-0 team," a quote from one Cavalier, became Duke's rallying cry for the remainder of the season.
"[Last year] we were totally focused," Wells said. "They were a ranked team at the time, and we had just come off a loss to Florida State, so we had a lot to prove still. People still had doubts in their mind on whether the Duke football team was a good team, and so we were very, very focused throughout the week.
"I think we surprised a lot of teams last year, mainly Virginia."
While Goldsmith appreciates the competitiveness of a rivalry, don't expect him to focus all of his attention on the past few years. Goldsmith, only in his second year as head coach of Duke, was not involved in the making of the rivalry in its negative sense, and he would like it to move on and graduate to the next level.
"Let's just leave it to football right now," Goldsmith said. "[The rivalry has] thrived on too many negatives rather than positives. I think the two football teams last year went out and played a very good, very hard, clean football game and I think that's what the rivalry should be and leave some of the things in the past. A lot of it in past years was due to some real personal animosity between some coaches.
"[We need to] turn it into a positive rivalry between a school up there that's done a darn good job in the last eight or 10 years on the football field, and one here that's trying to get back to the tradition."
In order to keep that tradition going, Duke will have to play much better than it has so far this season to keep the game interesting against a very talented Virginia team. Duke currently ranks near the bottom of the ACC in most offensive and defensive categories and Saturday's game against Georgia Tech showed some of the reasons why.
Despite the team's apparent lack of ability, Goldsmith was still optimistic about many of the things he saw in the game.
"There were a lot of things that you could look at as bright spots in the football game," Goldsmith said. "Overall, I think [senior quarterback Spence Fischer's] play has improved quite a bit and our running backs were hitting the holes better. There's just a lot of things you can look at as positive, which put us in the position to win the football game. It didn't happen, I feel very badly about that, but this program is moving forward and good things are going to happen."
For this team to move forward, it will require a great deal of confidence and that may hinge on the Virginia game. A victory over a top-25 team can almost always put a team on a roll, while a drop to 2-5 will be just one more step into the grave for the Blue Devils.
"There are some victories that would erase a lot of heartache," Goldsmith said. "Hopefully [this Saturday], we will be better than we've been. That's what we've got to build toward. I have no control over Virginia obviously, but they are a very good football team. I definitely think [the Cavaliers are] one of the top 15 teams, but that's probably good for us that everybody we play from now on is very meaningful to Duke University."
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