How does Duke score enough points to beat Florida State
A Duke win at FSU would be unprecedented
How do you beat a team averaging 42.2 points per game?
Score 43?
Okay, that’s probably not happening.
Duke faces a pretty tall task this Saturday against fourth-ranked Florida State. Duke football has never defeated a team ranked higher than 4th.
Wallace Wade’s famous Iron Dukes beat Pittsburgh 7-0 in 1938. Duke was ranked third, Pitt 4th and the game was played at Duke. This was the Duke team that didn’t allow a point in the regular season.
Thirteenth-ranked Duke upset fourth-ranked Navy 19-10 in 1960. That Navy team was led by back Joe Bellino, who would go on to win the 1960 Heisman Trophy.
That game also was played at Duke.
In other words Duke has never defeated a team ranked that high away from Duke and it has never defeated a team ranked that high from the same conference.
The highest-ranked conference team to fall against Duke? North Carolina was ranked seventh when 13th-ranked Duke beat them 13-3 in 1939. Both teams were in the Southern Conference. Seventh-ranked Clemson fell to Duke in 1989, 21-17, in an ACC contest. But both of those games were at Duke.
Arkansas was ranked 7th when Duke beat them in the 1961 (1960 season) Cotton Bowl. But that was on a neutral field.
The highest ranked team to fall to Duke at their home field? Virginia was ranked ninth when Duke beat them in Charlottesville in 1952. The score of that one was 21-7. Georgia Tech was ranked ninth when Duke beat them at their place in 1959 by a 10-7 score. Duke lineman Mike McGee was so dominant in that game that he largely won the Outland Trophy, as the nation’s best lineman, on that performance.
You might be wondering about Duke’s win over Stanford in 1971. Stanford was ranked 10th, Duke 19th.
The highest-ranked ACC team to lose at home to Duke?
That would be 16th-ranked Virginia Tech, 13-10, back in that magical year of 2013, a win that helped propel Duke to the Coastal Division title.
I’m giving you the history lesson to point out the magnitude of the task awaiting Duke. This simply is not a game Duke has been in the habit of winning.
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