Duke holds off Northwestern comeback

Yes, it's a game of inches.

It took Duke 59 plus minutes to figure out how to stop Evan Hull. It turns the secret is to make him fumble six inches shy of the goal line.

Jaylen Stinson delivered the hit and Brandon Johnson fell on the loose ball in the end zone to preserve Duke’s 31-23 win over Northwestern.

There were times when Duke looked like a team that could contend for the Coastal Division title.

There were times when they most emphatically did not.

“It was ugly at times,” winning coach Mike Elko said, “nice at times, really ugly at times. But we just kept competing.”

The same thing could be said about Northwestern and they were the favored team playing at home with an extra week of rest.

And yet it was an exhausted Duke defense, on the field for almost 100 plays, that made that one-more-play-than-the-other-team-made that coaches reference in close games.

Duke was almost perfect for the first 16 minutes or so. The Blue Devils scored touchdowns on its first three possessions, drives of 77, 80 and 90 yards, fueled by one explosive after another.

Jalon Calhoun had receptions of 18 and 23 yards to set up Duke’s first score, a 16-yard run by Jaylen Coleman. Jordan Waters went 42 yards for the second touchdown. An 81-yard pass from Riley Leonard to Eli Pancol set up Waters from 3 yards out and Duke was up 21-0 less than a minute into the second quarter.

Pancol was interfered with on that bomb and still made the play.

“Riley threw me a perfect ball,” Pancol said. “We do this all the time in practice and this is just the way we do it in practice.”

Northwestern fought back and Duke certainly helped them. A pass-interference call against Darius Joiner on third down kept alive Northwestern’s first touchdown drive.

It was 21-10 at the half.

“I just thought we got a little bit out of rhythm,” Elko said of his suddenly stagnant offense. “We were really precise and accurate early. Then they started boxing in the runs a little bit, which caused us to get into the RPO game and we missed a couple of blocks on the perimeter and some of the ball placement was just a little bit off.”

Duke squandered two scoring opportunities in the third quarter. With the ball on the Northwestern 9-yard line Pancol let a should-have-been touchdown pass go through his hands into an interception.

Pancol owned the mistake.

“It was tough. Riley threw me a good ball. It was definitely catchable. I make that play nine times out of ten. That was the tenth time. Great ball, should have had that one.”

Later in the third Charlie Ham missed a 39-yard field goal.

It was his fourth miss of the young season.

Northwestern kept climbing the hill. Shaka Heyward had a would-be interception knocked out of his hand by a teammate late in the third quarter.

Northwestern scored on the next play, a 39-yard fourth down TD pass from Ryan Hilinski.

Hull is a running back but he ended the game with a jaw-dropping 213 receiving yards on 14 receptions.

“We knew he was a threat,” Elko said. “We talked about that all week. He was the one who was multi-dimensional. They did some really creative things to get him the football. They got their screen going. We have to be more disciplined in how we defend screens. I thought we missed some tackles on him that gave him a lot of yards, which is very disappointing.”

But Johnson intercepted the two-point conversion, the first of three huge second-half plays the sophomore from Newton, N.C. made.

Duke got some separation with its only second-half touchdown drive, Leonard hitting Jordan Moore for the score, making it 28-16.

Elko called it the biggest drive of the game.

“I thought they had all the momentum going and that’s the point in time when your guys need to answer back.”

They needed it. Northwestern scored again and it was 28-23.

But Johnson picked off Hilinski deep in Northwestern territory late in the game. Duke picked up a first-and-goal at the 5. Three rushes put the ball inches shy of the goal line.

Up 28-23, Elko opted to go for three and this time Ham converted.

Why not try to punch it in?

“I just felt like at that point in time we could stretch the lead to eight. They would have no time-outs left, which in our mind meant they would have to have chunk-yard plays all the way down the field. And then even if they were able to do that they were still going to need a two-point play to tie the game. Even if they were able to pull that off we would be going into overtime and we would have a chance to win there.”

It almost backfired. Northwestern marched down the field with aplomb, Hilinski on target play after play.

He ended the game with 36 completions on 60 attempts, for 435 yards.

But Duke made that one final play, Jaylen Stinson jarring the ball from Hull’s grasp and Johnson falling on it and suddenly Duke was 2-0, its first road win since beating Syracuse two years ago.

“The play that Stinson makes is unbelievable,” Elko said. “For him to jar the ball loose on the six-inch yard line like that. We’re running to cause the fumble but we’re also running with enough guys so if it’s there we’re going to pick it up.”

A win is a win is a win and this was a big one.

“That was a great team we just played against,” Pancol said. We knew it was going to be a fight. We’re just ready to keep it going.”

“What a football game,” Elko added. “I thought we battled and fought and clawed down the last inch.”