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Duke can finish with a .500 record
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Published: November 25, 2009
DURHAM - Football season at Duke will end on Saturday, and the team will have the chance to close shop with the program's most significant achievement in 15 years.
A win against visiting Wake Forest will give Duke a 6-6 record. Duke won't become bowl eligible with a win, but it will be able to post its first non-losing season since 1994, the last time it finished with a winning record.
And that possibility will provide plenty of motivation for quarterback Thaddeus Lewis, who will play the final game of his record-breaking career, and 13 other players who will bow out, including five juniors who have been in school for four years and can graduate in the spring.
"This is our last game for the seniors," Lewis said. "The last game lasts for a lifetime. If you don't remember anything, you're going to remember the last game you played.
"It's going to mean a lot to us. We're taking this game as serious as it is. We're not going to let anybody slap us down. This is our legacy, what we're going to leave behind."
Only nine seniors are left in the program. Some are in their fifth seasons after being redshirted. Duke's 5-6 record is the closest that they have come to a winning season in their careers.
One win separates a 6-6 record from a 5-7 record. The difference might seem minute to a casual observer, but not to linebacker Vincent Rey or any other Blue Devil.
According to Rey, a 6-6 record will be assurance that he is leaving the Blue Devils having helped set a firm foundation under Coach David Cutcliffe for future seasons.
Although Rey will never have played on a winning Duke team, he said he's hopeful that he will have made it possible that someone behind him will.
"It's important to me, as well as the seniors, and as well as the rest of the team," Rey said. "It's important for the program, and that's the only thing on our minds right now: do whatever we can to get this win against this team."
Lewis has set 48 Duke quarterbacking records. He wasn't recruited by Cutcliffe; he was brought to Duke by Ted Roof, the previous coach who is now Auburn's defensive coordinator.
Cutcliffe is finishing his second season at Duke but has grown close to the seniors. He said that all have done everything asked by the coaching staff. The two seasons have produced nine wins, one short of matching Duke's win total for the six seasons before Cutcliffe's arrival.
Cutcliffe said he is confident that his relationship with the seniors is one of mutual respect.
"If you're not careful when you take over a program, you can put the older folks on the back burner and totally focus on people you recruit," he said. "We've consciously avoided that...."
"I feel like they're our own after two years with them. I absolutely feel like they're our own. And that's a good feeling. I have just as strong feelings for those seniors now of any seniors I've ever had recruited from start to finish."
Duke has lost its last three games but Cutcliffe is hopeful that he has witnessed an encouraging sign. Black cats live in the area around Wallace Wade Stadium and they cross Cutcliffe's paths around the stadium almost daily, the universal sign for bad luck.
Driving to the stadium yesterday with Tony Sales, Duke's director of football operations, Cutcliffe saw a cat again.
"We didn't run over it," Cutcliffe said. "We thought it was one of our black cats, but it turned out to be this gorgeous brown, calico cat headed into Wallace Wade Stadium.
"Yes, the black cat hex is over. So, I'm in a damn good mood."
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