Can Duke football regain its mojo against a vexatious rivalry
Devils host Pitt Panthers in regular-season finale
Duke and Pittsburgh have been playing football a long time. Pitt was the opponent in 1929 when the Duke Stadium opened. Pitt won 52-7. Wallace Wade’s biggest ever win at Duke might have been a 7-0 win over Pitt in 1938. Duke was ranked third nationally, Pitt fourth. This was Duke’s famous Iron Dukes team. The next year Duke went 8-1. The loss was to Pitt, 14-13.
The teams played sporadically through the 1950s and 1960s. Bill Murray’s last Duke team beat Pitt 21-13 in 1965, in Durham. Duke hasn’t defeated the Panthers in Durham since then. In 1976 the then second-ranked Pitt team came to Duke and defeated the Devils 44-31. Tony Dorsett won the Heisman that season and Pitt won the national title.
Pitt joined the ACC for the 2013 season. Members of the now non-existent Coastal Division, the teams have met every year since then.
Duke has won one of those game, a double- overtime win at Pitt in 2014.
Pitt has won shoot-outs, defensive struggles, won with late scores, with late stops.
Can Duke end the slide this Saturday?
Well, the Panthers are 3-8. But they beat Louisville earlier this season and they’re coming off a 24-16 win over Boston College. And Virginia had a lousy overall record but was on an upward trajectory when they met Duke last week and we all know how that turned out.
I asked Mike Elko what Pitt was able to do against BC that they weren’t able to do against so many other teams.
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