Upcoming Event: Football at North Carolina on November 22, 2025 at 3:30 p.m.
Football
at North Carolina
Quotes: Duke 49, N.C. Central 14
9/26/2009 11:00:00 PM | Football
Duke Head Coach David Cutcliffe
On his overall impression of Duke's play against N.C. Central:
"I told them at halftime that we hadn't out-hit anybody, hadn't out-run anybody, hadn't out-kicked anybody and hadn't out-fought anybody, and that was the truth. I didn't see what we were looking for. The second half, I saw more of what we're looking for. If you play the game like it's meant to be played, you don't need somebody to start you up, you go out there from the very beginning. We've got some youth and some people who, maybe through their experiences over time, who just don't quite get that. You've got to be a self-starter in this level of football, and in the second half I thought they responded."
On the play of true freshman running back Desmond Scott:
"We had two true freshmen start tonight - John Drew and Desmond Scott. I knew Desmond was ready, and he's got a lot to learn and a long way to go, but he's got a lot of quickness, capability and strength. He's got a lot of confidence, and that's a good thing, but sometimes we have to harness a little bit of that. I'm anxious for him to see this tape and then next week, it gets serious. It's a real opportunity next week for him (against Virginia Tech)."
On the areas he was impressed with in Saturday's win:
"I thought our throwing and catching was better, the consistency of it was much better. I thought (quarterback) Thad (Lewis), for the first time, looked like Thad. He was sharp. He put the ball in some real tight spots. We caught the ball too. That breeds more successes, and so does people getting yards after the catch. Donovan (Varner), Johnny (Williams), Austin (Kelly) and Conner (Vernon) - just guys catching the ball and making some plays. We haven't had that consistently since I've been here, and it starts growing your weapons a little bit. We've got a lot of room for improvement on offense, but I think that was a good start in the right direction tonight."
On the upcoming home game against Virginia Tech on Oct. 3:
"I was thrilled that they were excited when I mentioned it. They know what's ahead of them. You remember, if you go back, to our ACC challenges a year ago. We just kept coming up short and we fought and then came up short, played well one game, but this is a whole brand new season. Even though there's an open date, this is an eight-game season and now it's time for us to go fight, scratch and claw and see what we can come up with."
Redshirt Freshman Running Back Patrick Kurunwune
On the team running for 233 yards in the win over N.C. Central:
"We're just really happy we were able to come out and run the ball. All week during practice, coach Cutcliffe continued to stress how we should be able to run the ball. It was one of our emphases in practice this week to be able to do that."
On the play of the offensive line:
"All the credit goes to our offensive line. We can't move the ball from the running back position unless the offense line is doing what they're supposed to do. They did a great job of showing what they can do today."
Senior Quarterback Thaddeus Lewis
On the play of running backs Desmond Scott and Patrick Kurunwune:
"Both of the guys did a great job stepping up, Desmond and Patrick. With Jay (Hollingsworth) and Re'quan (Boyette) going down, for those guys to step in and do what they did tonight was big for this program."
On how the running game helped the passing game:
"It opens up the passing game. Toward the end, they were looking for us to run and that kind of opened things up."
On playing N.C. Central:
"Those guys came out and played great. That's the type of intensity you want to see out of a team, come out there and not back down. Fortunately, we put it together and stepped up in the second half. Hats off to the N.C. Central program, they played their hearts out. I'm sure they're continue to build over there."
N.C. Central Head Coach Mose Rison
Opening statement about the game:
"First of all tonight was a very historic night. It was a tremendous feeling to have an opportunity to be a part of something so special. A lot of hard work went into getting this opportunity for both schools to play this game. Our guys went out and played hard tonight. Give Coach [David] Cutcliffe credit. He got his guys ready to play tonight and sometimes these games are tough because they could easily have overlooked us and they didn't. They prepared to win, won the game and I want to commend him and his staff for what they are doing with Duke football."
On his team's play:
"In terms of our effort I thought early on we were sluggish. We didn't quite get them figured out in terms of what they were doing on offense. Once we got our feet under us and started to understand what they were doing we were able to make some things happen on offense. The defense settled down and then we were able to move the ball and we thought we had them off balance for a while and got the game much closer. I think the halftime score was 28-14, so it was a good ball game. We came back out in the second half and said if we score early to make it 28-21 who knows what was going to happen. Obviously we had the long pass called back on a holding call so once again we hurt ourselves in a key situation. All in all I'm tremendously proud of our football team and thought we played extremely hard. The good news is that we came out of this thing fairly healthy from what I can see. Next week we have a very, very important ball game on our schedule. So we'll come back to practice next week and do everything we can to get ourselves better."
On the biggest turning point in the second half:
"One of the things is the long pass that was called back. That hurt us. It was 28-14 and in the first series we throw a deep ball and it was probably a 45-yard gain and we get a holding call on that one. That really hurt us and if I'm not mistaken we had at least two third-and-long situations where we had them backed up and we didn't finish third down. We didn't get off the field on third down on defense. So you take a couple of those situations and that play we had called back and those things in a good football game are hard to overcome sometimes. I thought those were turning points in the game getting out of hand."
On the speed of N.C. Central:
"One of the things we pride ourselves on is our team speed. We think we have tremendous team speed and it has shown up in every game we played. When Duke came out and was moving the ball pretty good it just took us some time to figure out what was going on. Once we made our adjustments, our team speed started to show up and we were able to make some plays. There is no doubt that our team speed is a tremendous factor and we talk about it all the time. We go into every game and say we need to use our team speed."
Players Mentioned
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