Quotes: Duke 31, James Madison 7

Head Coach David Cutcliffe

“A great win -- not only a great win for our players, but a great win for our fans. The first, inaugural, Blue Devil walk. Those who are listening who were there. Thank you, thank you, thank you. A big, giant, thank you to our students. That was unbelievable. I am still overwhelmed by that. But our entire, Duke faithful. It was a lot of fun out there.”

On the third quarter:
“One of our game maxims is play for make the breaks ? when one comes your way, score. We played that to the tilt in the third quarter. I talked with them about the first five minutes of the third quarter. I wasn't thrilled with the kickoff coverage, but a huge play by Jabari [Marshall] and we capitalized on it. We became the more physical team in the third quarter, which is basically what I told them at halftime. We quit beating ourselves offensively. We learned a lot from tonight and got better. We are going to have to continue to get better. But I think the guys had a good time competing.”

On the offensive line:
“I thought that they were pretty darn consistent. They were really playing an eight-man front, really determined to stop the run. They were really playing tight ? slants inside and a lot of things forcing us outside with the football. You saw it in the fourth down that we went for. I had a lot of confidence in what they were doing. That is probably the most physical that I have seen them and I have watched these kids play the last two years every game on tape. Tonight I thought it was the most physical I have seen this line play. Hats off to Matt Luke and Ron Middleton on what they did to get these guys ready up front.”

On what you told the students at the end of the game:
“I told them let's save those goalposts for later on down the road. I want it to become a habit to believe in winning at Duke. I know that you can. I appreciated them being there. They were leaning over that rail and I don't ever want to ever see someone get hurt. I told them let's pick a game later on down the road see if we can get a big win and I am sure they are going to come have some fun somewhere down the line.”

On getting ready for Northwestern:
“Absolutely, I watched Northwestern against Syracuse a good bit today. A no huddle offense and a very experienced offensive football team. They are going to spread the field and make it difficult for our defense. Our defense was tremendous tonight, but they will be much more challenged next week by a passing game. We are going to have to play total offense. The big thing we will have to do is see if we can keep those rascals off the field and for us to keep the ball on offense.”

Senior Greg Akinbiyi

“It feels good to win at home for the first time since 2005. Everybody has been working so hard. It is something we really deserved and we went and took. The offense showed up, the defense showed up, we all showed up -- Duke showed up. We have some things to correct and get better next week.”

Senior Clifford Harris

“We knew I was one of the tougher backs. Our job was to punch it in the endzone. We have to take advantage of our opportunities. When I got down there with the help of the offensive line getting a good push. I was able to punch it in there twice.”

On the third quarter:
“The defense came up big and we just knew we had to capitalize. The offense worked together and pulled it together. We knew since we had the short side of the field we had the advantage. We took advantage of the short field.”

On going for it on fourth downs:
“We knew we had good field position on the fourth down situations and we had the chance to make big plays. With our head coach making the decisions ? we went for fourth down and we converted with the offense. The defense came up big plenty of times stopping them on fourth down as well.”

On the next game:
“We know we have to enjoy tonight, but we have to put it out of our minds quickly. We have to correct the mistakes that we had and focus on Northwestern.”

Senior Eron Riley

“This feeling ? I haven't had a chance to experience it that long. Today we came out and had our first win at home. We had a great group of fans out there. It felt great to have the fans out there.”

James Madison Head Coach Mickey Matthews:

On the difference in the game:
Obviously the big play in the game was the interception there [on JMU's first possession of the second half]. After the great kickoff return, we were in great shape but that was basically a 14-point turnover and really hurt us.

On their performance:
We had 3 turnovers in the 2nd half which is very bad and that was the game. I thought we were very poor offensively. They ran 79 plays and we ran 48. Defensively, we didn't tackle very well, but we just couldn't get off the field. We played very hard but just couldn't get off the field on defense. We couldn't pass protect, threw interceptions, were jumping offsides. It was a very poor performance by us offensively. Give credit to Duke. When you play a football game and don't get a major penalty you're hard to beat and Duke did that and it really helped them.

On missed tackles:
I'm upset with it. Our backs ran hard, but I didn't think we were tackling as well as we wanted to. The only really negative thing to say was third-down conversions. I don't think we made one in the second quarter, but I thought our offense was a total disgrace.