The Blue Devils are accustomed to disrespect from the national media—after all, they are routinely picked to finish near the bottom of the ACC every year.
But doubts coming from within the Duke community are harder to stomach.
“It’s the challenge that you hear around campus, ‘Oh, you’re not going to win, you’re not going to beat them,’” redshirt freshman Sydney Sarmiento, a starting defensive end, said Tuesday when asked why Duke has traditionally played Miami tough at home. “You just want to try to prove people wrong. It’s a personal challenge for me.
“You do get a lot of people saying, ‘Oh, this will be an easy win.'"
When asked who, specifically, expresses these opinions, Sarmiento said it’s mainly faculty members who are North Carolina fans.
“It kind of bothers me,” he said. “But at the same time you’re always going to have people that don’t support you as much as they support, maybe, another team.”
Right now, the oddsmakers have Duke as a 19 ½-point underdog for this weekend’s contest against the Hurricanes.
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