Duke is 0-13 in the month of November in David Cutcliffe\u2019s three seasons, which gives you a good indication of the lack of depth in the Blue Devils\u2019 program. Duke has some talent on its front line but lacks the back-ups that strong programs have, which is why the Devils get worn down as the season progresses. <\/p>\n
This year, Cutcliffe believes Duke is better equipped for the rigors of the year. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re much better,\u201d Cutcliffe said Wednesday. \u201cThere\u2019s no question, the last two Novembers we\u2019ve come a part a little bit at the seams. There were a lot of reasons. Our people performed at a high level but there was a lot of pressure on a few players. It takes its toll. It\u2019s like a baseball pitcher who throws a lot of pitches.\u201d<\/p>\n
Duke returns nine starters on offense, six on defense, and 40 lettermen overall. The Blue Devils aren\u2019t saying they are Alabama or anything, but Cutcliffe did say he plans to play a total of about 40 players on offense and defense in Saturday\u2019s home opener against Elon.<\/p>\n
Last year, he said, Duke played only 14 on offense and 16 or 17 on defense in the opener against Richmond. Last year\u2019s preseason was a bizarre one, with the team struggling with swine flu, but still, he said Duke would have played only around 30 or so players in the opener even if fully healthy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re getting competition at certain positions and we haven\u2019t had that,\u201d Cutcliffe said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s going to do nothing but continue to improve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Duke is 0-13 in the month of November in David Cutcliffe\u2019s three seasons, which gives you a good indication of the lack of depth in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}