By BRYAN STRICKLAND
bstrickland@heraldsun.com; 419-6671
DURHAM -- The silver lining for Duke fans still blue over Saturday night's opening-game loss to Richmond is that Coach David Cutcliffe insists that his team still has the tools to have a winning season and become a bowl team.
The sobering reality is that his team isn't good enough to win any games if it again plays with its head in the clouds.
"I worried all night long last night if I had set up a set of expectations that we were going to go out there and it was going to be easy," Cutcliffe said Sunday, one day after the Spiders knocked off Duke 24-16. "We don't have enough ability to play on ability alone. We can't go out there and try to look pretty and play.
"We're going to have to win the hard way, and somehow I let us forget that. That's my responsibility. I may have created an air of too much confidence."
Cutcliffe said that more than looking past Richmond -- the reigning Football Championship Series national champions -- the Blue Devils may have looked in the mirror and liked what they saw a bit too much.
"I think maybe we read our press clippings a little bit," Cutcliffe said. "It's not that we don't respect Richmond; they had seen plenty of pictures of Richmond holding the national championship trophy. But I just don't think it sunk in how well we were going to have to play and how fierce we were going to have to compete to have a chance to win.
"We realized Richmond was good, but in their mind, James Madison (a 31-7 victim to open the 2008 season) was somewhat easy last year, so I just don't think we really understood what it was going to take."
Cutcliffe said there were real areas of concerns going forward to be sure, areas that Army will attempt to expose Saturday when the Cadets welcome Duke to West Point fresh off a 27-14 victory over Eastern Michigan in their opener.
Duke's kicking game struggled unlike it did at any point in 2008, essentially with the same personnel, and the defense appeared to wear down in the game's late stages. On offense, Duke managed to net just 19 rushing yards, a number that could have been less than zero had quarterback Thad Lewis not somehow absorbed just one sack on a night when he was constantly on the run.
The pressure that Richmond's defensive line exerted and the lack of push from Duke's defensive line -- the Blue Devils had just one tackle for loss -- put an exclamation point on the Spiders' surprising domination of both lines of scrimmage.
But while those are causes for concern, Cutcliffe doesn't think that means the Blue Devils will have no chance when they face bigger, faster and stronger lines down the line.
"They won the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball because they out-competed us there. That is disturbing," Cutcliffe said. "We didn't loaf -- don't take it that way -- but we just didn't give the type of fierce effort that it takes to beat a good football team.
"I expect us them to respond extremely well. We have faced a lot of adversity, and a lot of our youngsters unfortunately have had to come back from a lot of defeats.
"I want them to come back differently than we have in the past. I want them to come back angry, to come back with a focus that's second to none."
NOTES -- Lewis, with two touchdown passes, moved into second place on Duke's career list with 49. Ben Bennett threw 55 from 1980-83. ... Duke's receivers started strong. Sophomore Johnny Williams caught his first career TD and had seven catches for 115 yards; junior Austin Kelly had career highs in catches (7) and yards (80) and caught a TD pass; and true freshmen Conner Vernon (four catches, 48 yards) and Tyree Watkins (three catches, 31 yards), had encouraging debuts. ... Senior nose guard Kinney Rucker out of Jordan High School, considered a sure bet to miss the early part of the season just weeks ago with a foot injury, managed to play in the opener, recording one tackle.
