Duke football faces final 2 games with division title aspirations

Despite reaching its first bowl game in nearly two decades last season, David Cutcliffe's Duke squad opened the 2013 campaign the same way it had in five of the head coach's six seasons in Durham—picked to finish dead last in the ACC's Coastal Division.

"That's kind of standard, right. I've gotten used to that since we've been here," Cutcliffe said. "The only difference this year is that we went from sixth to seventh."

Four months to the day after the Blue Devils were picked to finish last at the ACC's annual media day in Greensboro, N.C., Duke has turned the conference's Coastal Division standings squarely on its head.

Off to an 8-2 start, the Blue Devils are now in the driver's seat as they make a push for a spot in next month's ACC championship game. With road contests against Wake Forest and North Carolina remaining on their schedule, two wins would seal a spot for Duke in the conference title game and a date with No. 2 Florida State to play for a BCS berth.

"I've never been on an 8-2 team in my life," tight end Braxton Deaver said. "The wins we've had, the movement we've made as a program—it's unbelievable."

The journey was not without its bumps in the road. The Blue Devils lost starting quarterback Anthony Boone in the second game of the season to a broken collarbone and subsequently lost each of backup Brandon Connette's first two starts. At that last point it wasn't certain whether or not six wins and a second straight bowl berth would be in the cards.

Following Boone's return in an impressive win against Navy, Duke's offense struggled mightily. But the Blue Devil defense carried the team to wins, including a 13-10 victory against then-No. 16 Virginia Tech that was the team's first road victory against a ranked opponent in 42 years.

Duke has reinvented itself at multiple points during this season. At different times, the Blue Devils have been a pass-first team, a run-first team and most recently, a two-quarterback team. After Boone struggled in back-to-back contests and was pulled out of Duke's win against N.C. State, he split snaps with Connette in the Blue Devils' 48-30 win against Miami, the team's second victory against a ranked opponent this year.

"I like our pure team mentality," Cutcliffe said. "I think when you have that, it lets all three phases contribute whatever way they can to winning."

Aside from gaining respect in the conference, Duke football is back in the national spotlight. The last time the Blue Devils had this much notoriety on the national stage was when they snapped a 22-game losing streak—the nation's longest active skid at the time—in 2007 with a road win against Northwestern. Duke students ran to Wallace Wade Stadium and tore down the goalposts in response, and the team wasn't even there to celebrate with them.

As Duke heads down I-40 to take on Wake Forest this weekend, it will play its first game as a ranked team since the Blue Devils lost to Wisconsin in the Hall of Fame Bowl Jan. 2, 1995.

Eighteen of the team's freshmen were not born when Duke played that game.

"The thing that's nice about it is you have people that the foundation was built on and then you have people trying to build on that foundation," Cockrell said. "Our job as seniors is to make sure that foundation never gets forgotten."

In seasons past, November games for the Blue Devils meant a buildup to the offseason. A number of the team's ACC counterparts would pray for Duke to pull off an unlikely upset in hopes of propelling them to a division title.

Now with two weeks to play, Miami, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech and North Carolina are all in contention for the ACC Coastal Division crown. All four of them need the Blue Devils to lose in order to get there.

Consider the script flipped.

"It's a little strange," Cockrell said. "Teams may have taken us for granted in years past because of our program history. And now you have no choice but to respect us and to play as hard as you can."