EVANSTON, Ill. - After his team's 38-0 opening-week loss to East Carolina, Duke coach Carl Franks probably thought his team couldn't go from bad to worse.
He would have been right.
They skipped straight to awful.
Northwestern running back Damien Anderson twice set his career long rushing mark en route to a two-touchdown, 187-yard performance as an intense Wildcat club (2-0) handed the hapless Blue Devils (0-2) a 38-5 loss before a sparse Saturday crowd at Ryan Field.
"We've got to play pretty much a perfect game for us to have a chance [to win]," Franks said. "It's a team that has to grow."
But it didn't start out as Duke's second straight blowout loss.
This time, they got the beginning right.
Brandishing an impressive running game, the Blue Devils started strong out of the gate, in contrast to a shaky opener against ECU that saw quarterback Spencer Romine's pass intercepted and returned for a touchdown on the third play of the game.
Led by senior Duane Epperson, who rushed for 24 of his team-high 38 yards on the first drive, the Duke ground attack churned out an eight-play drive from its own 20-yard line, pushing the Wildcats back to their own 39-yard line and breaking through the opponent's 40-yard line for the first time this season.
A sack on third-and-five forced the Blue Devils to punt, but three plays after Brian Morton pinned the Wildcats on their own three-yard line, junior defensive tackle Charles Porter gave Duke its first points of the season on a safety with 9:27 left to play in the first quarter.
And that's when the right beginning suddenly became the wrong end.
A first down offering from Romine deflected off the upper body of receiver Jeremy Battier and lofted lazily into the air, falling into the hands of Northwestern corner Raheem Covington and ending a promising Duke drive deep in Wildcat territory.
Five plays later, Anderson exploded down the left side of the field and outran the Duke secondary for a career long 56-yard run and the first of five Wildcat touchdowns on the day.
"It was about time," Anderson said. "Coach always says that we need to keep cashing in our chips and keep running hard and something will eventually happen. It happened."
Anderson wasn't done-he added a handful of moves to a busted play in the third quarter and scampered for a new career-long dash of 66 yards and his second touchdown-Duke was.
The Wildcats picked off another deflected pass-this time off an improbable bounce off the foot of intended receiver Kyle Moore-and put up 10 points on their next two possessions to send the Blue Devils into an early 17-2 hole.
Three touchdowns in their first four possessions in the second half sealed the Wildcats' first 2-0 start in 25 years.
But as impressive as the Wildcats offense was with Anderson's near-200-yard day and junior quarterback Zak Kustok running a no problem no-huddle offense, the day belonged to the Wildcats defense.
After Duke's opening drive, Northwestern erased all traces of Duke's once-promising ground attack and kept the Blue Devils' young receiving corp neutralized. The Wildcat defense held Franks' club to just 44 rushing yards and 174 yards of total offense, the second straight week the Blue Devils have failed to break the 200-yard mark for total yards.
And for the second straight week, Duke quarterbacks spent a large chunk of the game on their backs. Northwestern aggressively blitzed the Blue Devil offensive line and gained a control over the Blue Devils it didn't have a season ago in a 15-12 slugfest win in Durham.
"We said blitz their ass," Northwestern coach Randy Walker. "We don't hold back. We're coming at you for 60 minutes on both sides and it's not a [playing Duke] thing, it's Northwestern football-never hold back."
The Wildcats also continued a dubious streak for the Blue Devils, holding them without a touchdown for the third straight game, dating back to a 38-0 loss to North Carolina last season.
"We are just not catching breaks," Franks said. "We need something good to happen to us."
Redshirt freshman Brent Garber scored the first points of the year for the Duke offense, nailing his first field goal attempt of the season from 27-yards out late in the second quarter.
But a single field goal in eight quarters this season is likely far from what Franks expected at the season's start, and for now, the second-year head coach is left to return to the drawing board, a familiar position with his youthful Blue Devil squad.
"I'm not a very patient guy," he said. "I'm learning that we have just have to stay positive."
But at 0-2 and with the conference schedule now upon them, patience may be even harder to come by than a touchdown.
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