For one quarter Saturday night, fantasy set in for the Duke football team.
After quarterback D. Bryant connected on a 78-yard pass play to tailback Chris Douglas and the Blue Devil defense continually controlled the line of scrimmage, Duke entered the second quarter of play with a shocking 6-0 lead.
But just as quickly as Duke's fantasy had been summoned, it came to a crashing halt. Old problems that plagued the Blue Devils (0-1, 0-1 in the ACC) last season, like turnovers, dropped passes and the defense's tendency to give up the big play, resurfaced after the contest's first 15 minutes, leading to an all-too-familiar result-a 55-13 drubbing by Florida State (1-0, 1-0) at Wallace Wade Stadium.
After the contest, the Blue Devils were upbeat about their effort, especially about their first-quarter shutout of the vaunted Seminoles, but admitted that they still have a long way to go before they will be able to compete with the rest of the ACC.
"In the first quarter, we were having a real good time out there. We were flying around out there, making some tackles and hitting some people," said freshman linebacker Jim Scharrer.
Scharrer recorded eight tackles on the evening, second only to teammate Kenneth Stanford.
"We just shot ourselves in the foot one too many times," he said.
The first instance of Duke shooting itself in the foot came early in the second quarter, just after Florida State had completed its first scoring drive of the evening, which culminated in a 40-yard field goal by 'Noles' placekicker Xavier Beitia to cut Duke's lead in half.
Moments later, after the Blue Devils were unable to convert on third down-and-12 from its own 25 yard line, freshman punter Trey McDonald fumbled a perfect snap, which Florida
Seminole running back William McCray rammed his way into the endzone four seconds later to give Florida State a 10-6 lead with 12 minutes remaining in the first half.
One-and-a-half minutes later, the Seminole special teams wreaked havoc on McDonald again, this time blocking his punt at the Blue Devil 12 yard line. Florida State's James Carter, who blocked McDonald's punt, retrieved the loose ball and ran it into the endzone to increase FSU's lead to 17-6.
"I think offensively and defensively we came out and played well. I don't think we played well at all on special teams," Duke coach Carl Franks said. "What momentum we had early we gave up, and with a team like Florida State, you can't give up easy chances to score."
After McDonald's blunders, the Seminoles scored twice more before halftime, one of which came on running back Nick Maddox's 51-yard scamper with 5:14 left in the half to give Florida State a 24-7 advantage. The other, which came on a 26-yard pass from FSU quarterback Chris Rix to Maddox with 1:06 remaining, augmented the 'Noles' advantage to 31-6 at halftime. The two end-of-half scoring drives were especially gratifying for Maddox, who was born and raised in nearby Kannapolis and spurned offers from several North Carolina schools to play football in the Sunshine State.
"I couldn't have painted a better setting, to come back home and have a great game like this," Maddox said. "I had about 40 families' members here [watching the game]."
Early in the third quarter, Maddox's family conglomerate was treated to another Seminole score when Florida State's Kyler Hall, a backup freshman defensive lineman, blocked McDonald for the second
Meanwhile, Duke's lone bright spot in the second half came at the end of the third quarter, when Blue Devil cornerback Ronnie Hamilton caught Seminole Chance Gwaltney's 51-yard punt and raced 68 yards down the sideline after a juking several Seminole special teamers to score Duke's second TD of the night, accounting for Duke's 13-point output. The punt return was Hamilton's second touchdown of his career, a number the senior hopes will continue to grow as the season progresses.
"The punt team did a good job of blocking," Hamilton said of his touchdown dash. "B.J. Hill had a great block and I was just able to see the hole. Then, I just took it from there."
Despite Hamilton's late-game score, the Blue Devils said that their focal point for the next week of practice will be the first quarter, where they demonstrated potential on both sides of the ball. In particular, Franks hopes that Bryant will continue to show him improvement in the pocket and that his defense will be able to create some turnovers by the opposing offense, just as Florida State did to Duke Saturday night. But all in all, the Blue Devils believe that, despite the lopsided loss, the Florida State game did give them something on which to build.
"All that we are going to try to do next week is focus on that first quarter today," Scharrer said. "If we play every week like we did that first quarter we will have no problem this year and will have a lot of fun."
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