Duke's dream is over

DURHAM -- Duke's grand plan for its 2008 football season had to end somewhere.

That somewhere turned out to be within spitting distance of N.C. State's end zone with less than six minutes left in the third quarter of Saturday's game in Wallace Wade Stadium.

With a decent shot at bowl eligibility still within reach, the Blue Devils had driven almost the length of the field for a first down on the Wolfpack 3-yard-line.

Four plays later -- three futile Clifford Harris rushes and an incomplete pass by junior quarterback Thaddeus Lewis -- Duke forked over ball possession and its last possible hope for any momentum change. With that went any serious hope the long-suffering Devils could pull off a miracle bowl trip in David Cutcliffe's maiden season as coach.

The desperate Wolfpack, playing at Duke for the first time since 2003, went on to take a 27-17 win that the left the Blue Devils (4-5, 1-4) with three difficult games ahead -- at Clemson, at Virginia Tech and back home for North Carolina to end the season on Nov. 29.

With much luck, Duke might win one of those three, but a 2-1 or 3-0 stretch run is less likely than Durham scoring another Rose Bowl game.

Cutcliffe sized it all up as just plain frustrating. "We let some chances slip, and that's something we'll live with," he said.

Other than the Pack's goal-line stand, the Devils had an earlier chance to get an emotional lift. It came on a fourth-and-1 play at the Pack's 10, where Will Young and Alan-Michael Cash cowboyed up against Duke runner Jay Hollingsworth.

Frustrating as it was from Duke's perspective, the Wolfpack got exactly what it deserved -- a clean-cut win. Now 3-6 overall and finally with a conference victory after four competitive league losses, State's first two seasons under Tom O'Brien primarily have been a deep, intense, graduate-level study in buzzard luck. Many of the State opponents that looked exactly like road-kill actually weren't.

And in the most technical sense, neither was Duke. Even after a demoralizing loss a week earlier at Wake Forest and the two fourth-down bummers Saturday, the Devils showed enough spunk to hang around late and score a meaningless touchdown. Down the road -- not this season -- that could be important.

Duke's recent history has been one of unconditional surrender under scoring stress. That didn't happen Saturday. Cutcliffe didn't have his best day punching the buttons, and the Blue Devils' pass defense was fully and fundamentally miserable on several pivotal downs.

But for each minus in college football, there's a plus, and State earned that distinction. Maybe -- just maybe -- the Pack got enough out of its still patched-up defense, redshirt freshman quarterback Russell Wilson, his receivers, the kicking game and running back Jamille Eugene to keep its 6-6 prayer alive.

In the final analysis, this anything except a classic Duke-State encounter as the series once went when Steve Spurrier was working one sideline and Dick Sheridan on the other. But the promise of better records was there for both schools. These days, it's almost as difficult to miss out on a bowl bid as it is land one. The Pack and Devils likely won't land on a bowl beach at the end of '08, but both are close enough to see one a year out.