In the season the men's cross country hopes to finally make its mark on the national stage, opportunity No. 1 went by the wayside Friday in South Bend, Ind.
Hoping to upstage nationally ranked Notre Dame on its home course, the Blue Devils instead were defeated handily after disappointing outings by several of the team's runners at the Notre Dame Invitational. Conference rival N.C. State and out-of-district competitors Arizona and Indiana also outperformed the Blue Devils, while top-seeded Stanford thrashed the competition for an uncontested first-place finish.
Still, far more frustrating for an up-and-coming Duke squad was watching a Fighting Irish program with nearly an identical ranking entering the meet crush the Blue Devils top-to-bottom.
"We were very disappointed with how we ran," junior Jay Champi said. "We weren't firing on our right cylinders at all. We had a golden opportunity and we just didn't perform like we should have. It was just a tough day for us across the board."
Measuring itself against the 25-minute mark as the benchmark time for the 8,000-meter distance, Duke was only able to usher three of its runners past the finish line in that time. That total was down from the four runners who eased under that time a week ago at the Great American Cross Country Festival.
While the Blue Devils missed their standard times, Notre Dame ran a consistent race all the way through its lineup. Duke had hoped to break up the Irish's dynamic top two of Luke Watson and Marc Striowski, but both runners edged out Sean Kelly, the first Blue Devil to complete the race.
Watson celebrated on his home course with the individual championship, soundly knocking off the second-through-fourth runners, all three of whom donned red and white for the Stanford Cardinal.
"We felt like going in we should have been able to beat everyone but Stanford," senior Brendan Fitzgibbon said. "I don't think [Notre Dame] ran particularly that well, I just feel like we ran a lot worse than we should have. A lot of the guys, myself included, just did not run well at all."
There were a few strong individual efforts from Duke, especially by juniors Kelly and Champi. Kelly paced the Blue Devils with a time of 24:32, finishing 13th overall, while Champi completed the 8,000-meter race faster than 25 minutes for the first time in his collegiate career.
Despite the personal best, the taste left in the junior's mouth was at best bittersweet after the team's failure.
"It's hard to be happy when the team did so poorly," Champi said.
Up next for the Blue Devils is one of the biggest meets of the season, with pre-Nationals looming one weekend away in Ames, Iowa.
Duke will have a second chance at some of the best teams in the country, but it will have to perform at a higher level than was exhibited Friday.
Still, the Blue Devils still left South Bend Friday with the consolation, however meager, that even poor performances by several of its top runners didn't prevent them remaining within striking distance of Arizona, Notre Dame, conference powerhouse N.C. State and Indiana.
"We definitely can beat those teams, we just need to run to our capabilities," Fitzgibbon said. "Arizona is ranked 10th and N.C. State is ranked eighth, and we were right there with them when we had a really bad day. I'm not even saying that super-optimistically, I'm saying that realistically."
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