Stanford came east to whip Duke 44-14 last season. Duke coach David Cutcliffe, who recruits heavily in California, says he likes going to play on the West Coast but again this season it will be a challenge to play familiar-foe Stanford.<\/p>\n
“They were extremely impressive (last year) and are now (this year) on tape,” Cutcliffe said during his weekly media teleconference. “Very, very talented, well-coached football team that just does so many things right. They’re good in the kicking game. They’re good on offense. Extremely physical offense with a lot of big-play capability there, and a defense that’s just relentless.”<\/p>\n
He said he thinks his Blue Devils are well prepared.<\/p>\n
Q. Coach, can you talk a little bit about Q. Did you use any of that game to test Q. Coach, I wanted to ask you about Q. Unlike a lot of schools around here, Q. Stanford score-wise appeared to Q. Did your team exceed your Q. I know you expected a lot from a Q. My impression was he probably Stanford came east to whip Duke 44-14 last season. Duke coach David Cutcliffe, who recruits heavily in California, says he likes going to play on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2825,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-duke-blue-devils","category-featured-stories","wpcat-82-id","wpcat-79-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4215","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4215"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4219,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4215\/revisions\/4219"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwhat you’ve done to keep your team focused
\nafter beating FIU?<\/em>
\nCOACH CUTCLIFFE:<\/strong> I think all you have
\nto do is turn on the tape of last year’s Stanford
\ngame. I don’t think it was hard to regather. We
\nhave a lot of people that played a lot of football
\nhere, so they understand that Sunday you watch
\nthe previous game, you put it behind you, you’re
\nmoving forward from that point on.
\nI think we’ve done a solid job of doing that.
\nThe first week you have to practice like that,
\nobviously after camp, then an opener. I think
\nwe’ve done a solid job of doing that.<\/p>\n
\noff potential plays you might use against
\nStanford?<\/em>
\nCOACH CUTCLIFFE:<\/strong> We run our offense,
\nwe run our defense, you game plan. But you have
\na defensive and offensive playbook. All of it comes
\nfrom within that. So we’ll try to do what we do
\nbest.<\/p>\n
\nthe travel. Coach (Tom) O’Brien was talking
\nabout the difficulty when you have to cross
\nthree time zones. Is that a problem and what
\ndo you do to alleviate it?<\/em>
\nCOACH CUTCLIFFE:<\/strong> I’ve done it a lot. I
\nthink it can be a problem if you let it be one. I think
\nthe worst thing – me personally – is to go out and
\ntry to stay two days, get on their time zone, et
\ncetera, et cetera. Your body really doesn’t have
\nthat amount of time to change.
\nWe’re going to make sure we hydrate.
\nWe’re going to get on the plane Friday, fly out
\nmidday, get there in the afternoon their time.
\nGoing to stretch as soon as we get there. We’ll
\nhave worked out that morning, but we’ll get the
\nkinks out. Take a while, get to the motel, eat, do
\nour normal routine, meet, get their snacks, put
\nthem to bed.
\nThe only difference we’re going to do is let
\nthem sleep in on Saturday morning, and by
\n‘sleeping in’ means sleeping in on eastern time.
\n18- to 23-year-olds have no trouble, no trouble
\nsleeping in on a Saturday morning. Once we get
\nup out there, we will be just in a normal 7:00, 7:30
\nkickoff mode, and nothing will be different than if
\nwe were here.<\/p>\n
\nyou have recruited California fairly heavily.
\nCan you talk about that. Is playing a game out
\nthere, showing the flag, important at all?<\/em>
\nCOACH CUTCLIFFE: <\/strong>Yeah, sure. We’re
\ngoing to see Cooper Helfet, one of our more recent
\nCalifornia products, that just finished by going to
\nSan Francisco. That’s where he is from. All of our
\nL.A. parents are driving up. We have Corbin
\nMcCarthy, Deion Williams, and Blair Hilliday from
\nLos Angeles, Brandon Connette. We’re
\nrepresented well out there and we’re going to
\ncontinue to recruit well out there.
\nI like playing in California. I like the
\nopportunity for people to see what Duke football is
\nall about.<\/p>\n
\nstruggle in their first game. Won by three
\npoints. Obviously there’s a transition from the
\nAndrew Luck era into the next one. Can you
\ntell a whole lot of difference? Are they making
\nmany adjustments on offense or are they just
\nrunning pretty much the same system with a
\ndifferent guy?<\/em>
\nCOACH CUTCLIFFE:<\/strong> They were a little
\nsimpler just because you’re going to be. You went
\nfrom the first player taken in the draft to a young
\nman that had really relatively no experience.
\nThat’s not easy for anyone. He’s got a game under
\nhis belt. He’ll be much better this week. Not that
\nhe was bad.
\nAlso, I knew this, because Mike McIntyre
\n(head coach at San Jose State and former Duke
\ndefensive coordinator) and I talked all summer,
\nthey played a good San Jose team. San Jose is
\ngoing to have a really good season this year, in my
\nopinion. In watching the tape, you saw two good
\nfootball teams. Mike’s defense is experienced and
\nphysical. Matched up to them pretty well. Kept
\nthem from making big plays. If an offense doesn’t
\nget a lot of explosives, it’s hard to get a lot of
\nyards. I thoughts that’s what San Jose did best.
\nOn the other side, their defense at
\nStanford didn’t disappoint at all. They held San
\nJose to 17 points and not very many yards. They
\nwere very impressive on defense and very
\nimpressive in the kicking game.
\nThey’ve had a change there. Their special
\nteams coach left and they have a new special
\nteams coach. I thought they played extremely well
\nin that area.
\nDon’t get confused by scores. This is a
\nreally good Stanford football team. This is a
\nNo. 18 team minimally in the country, so we have
\nour hands full.<\/p>\n
\nexpectations in that opener?<\/em>
\nCOACH CUTCLIFFE:<\/strong> No. I thought all
\nalong we had a good football team. A lot of guys
\nthat have played a lot of football here. We have
\nmore depth, some talented young people.
\nThe problem we knew going in, we had a
\nlot of people out of the game. We had 12
\nscholarship-position players out of the game. It
\nfrightens you. We had 21 people play their first
\ncollege football, 10 true freshmen and 11 redshirt
\nfreshmen.
\nI think the thing I was pleased about, I
\ndon’t know that I was surprised, was that those
\nguys played well. We’ll need them to continue to
\ndo that. If we can do that and build our depth, we
\nhave a chance to have a solid football team.<\/p>\n
\nfifth-year senior guy. Can you evaluate Sean’s
\n(Renfree) first game. Did he live up to your
\nexpectations?<\/em>
\nCOACH CUTCLIFFE:<\/strong> Yeah, obviously he
\nthrew the interception, backed up where he babied
\na ball, missed a couple throws he really didn’t need
\nto.
\nIt was interesting. I would want to see his
\nresponse. I went up and said, Hey, it’s been a
\nshaky start. Don’t let it set you back. Let’s get this
\nthing cranked up, which he did. I think he played
\nbetter than he’s played from that point on. His
\nstatistics were incredible. Not only that, he was
\naccurate with the ball. He had two balls dropped
\nafter that, and it could have been a better night for
\nhim than 21 of 30. He could have been 23 of 30.
\nIf he would have had a better start, he would have
\nhad 350 yards passing. The one he missed to
\nJamison deep in the end zone, he could have had
\nan incredible night. He just barely missed that
\ndeep post. I think he is well on his way to having a
\nspecial year. I am excited to see him continue to
\ncompete and keep playing at the level he’s playing.<\/p>\n
\nthrew deep better than I’ve seen him throw
\nbefore. Do you agree with that?<\/em>
\nCOACH CUTCLIFFE:<\/strong> Yeah, without a
\ndoubt. That’s not an accident. That’s something
\nthey’ve worked on all summer. We’ve asked him
\nto do. They’re further along than where we’ve
\nbeen.
\nI think this team made a huge commitment
\nin the summer on their own, which was really
\npleasing to me, and is a tribute to Sean Renfree,
\nour upperclassmen that are hungry.
\nIt’s never guaranteed. We play a tough
\nschedule. Everybody is good. Everybody can
\nbeat us. We’re going to throw our hat in the ring
\nand see what happens. If you want to have a
\nspecial year, you have to make a commitment to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"