Blue Devils lay a goose egg

ATLANTA -- The Duke football team won't escape this question in 2008: Can the resurgent Blue Devils successfully compete against ACC-level talent?

A week after Duke blew out Virginia for a rare ACC victory, Georgia Tech shut out the Blue Devils 27-0 on Saturday at Bobby Dodd Stadium.

It's clear the Devils still aren't ready for the question.

"You're only as good as your last performance," Duke senior receiver Eron Riley said after making five catches for just 20 yards. "What we put out there today, I don't think was our best."

After beating Virginia 31-3 last week, the Devils were primed to tackle their next challenge -- winning on the road for the first time in 17 ACC games.

ESPN was even posing the question, "Can Duke make it to a bowl this season?" during the morning portion of its GameDay broadcast.

It's very heady stuff for a program that went 1-23 the past two seasons. Duke (3-2 overall, 1-1 ACC) still couldn't hoist itself up to the next level, even with the momentum on its side.

"We can't measure ourselves as a team just in wins and losses alone at this stage," Duke coach David Cutcliffe said. "There's a lot of growth involved in everything we do. ... Obviously we failed the test on the field to a great degree."

Georgia Tech (4-1, 1-1) humbled Duke's offense.

So efficient scoring 123 points in the first four games, the Devils took backward steps against Tech.

Behind a skittish-looking quarterback in Thaddeus Lewis and an anemic running game, Duke ran 10 plays each in the second and third quarters and moved the ball a sum total of 4 yards in the middle quarters while putting up the goose egg.

Georgia Tech running back Jonathan Dwyer and wide receiver Demaryius Thomas humbled the Duke defense.

While stockpiling a career-high 159 yards, Dwyer ran wherever he wanted.

Duke junior linebacker Vincent Rey said during the week that the defense knew it had to tackle well to beat Tech's option offense.

On Dwyer's first carry, Duke missed two tackles in the middle near the line of scrimmage as Dwyer dashed off for a 25-yard gain.

Still, Duke's defense, led by rush end Greg Akinbiyi, who had 2 1/2 tackles behind the line of scrimmage, was in almost the same position at halftime against the Yellow Jackets as it was last week, trailing 3-0. Duke and UVa were tied 3-3 at halftime.

But Duke looked more like last season than last week after halftime on Saturday. The defense could only hold so long before poor field position on offense took its toll on Duke's efforts to stop the Yellow Jackets' option offense and other mistakes cropped up.

Tech quarterback Jaybo Shaw was 9-of-14 passing, and all nine completions went to Thomas. His 230 yards receiving was the second-highest total in school history. Dez White had 243 against Virginia in 1998.

Thomas burned the Duke secondary for an 88-yard touchdown catch-and-run in the fourth quarter.

On Thomas's big scoring catch on a sideline pattern, Duke safety Matt Daniels, perhaps the fastest player on the Duke team, fell on the play and couldn't help Glenn Williams chase Thomas down.

Duke has not been a heavily penalized team, but one of the three 15-yarders assessed against the Blue Devils led to a Georgia Tech touchdown.

Tech running back Roddy Jones scored on a 4-yard toss play at the 3:59 mark of the third quarter to put Tech up 10-0, but only after Duke cornerback Jabari Marshall was flagged for pass interference on third-and-15 from the Duke 28 three plays earlier.

Penalties, mistakes, losing and playing poorly frustrated the Blue Devils, and it showed on their faces after the game. But they insisted the loss was not a setback in their quest to earn ACC respectability.

"It doesn't mean we're thinking about going into that old mode," said Duke senior linebacker Michael Tauiliili, who led the team with 11 tackles.

Cutcliffe said playing harder than anyone else thinks they can should be the greatest asset his teams brings to the field each week.

Walking away from Bobby Dodd Stadium, the Blue Devils were most eager for this evening. They'll look at the game tape to see if the effort was there, to see if that asset is still an asset.

"The tape never lies," Akinbiyi said. "So you can feel one way [after the game], but until you see the tape, you won't know. Our goal is not to compete the vast majority of plays but [compete] every play and not take any off."