Rather than do a formal My Take, I thought I would document my experiences here.
I like the Research Triangle area of North Carolina a lot. It reminds me of CNY. Lots of rolling hills, trees and natural beauty. The pines may be Loblollies and the ground may be more sandy but I feel at home here. Lots of nice golf courses, just like I am used to.
The weather was also very CNY last weekend.
Spent a little time in downtown Durham before the game. It has a really nice small city feel to it. Lots of old buick buildings that have been restored, lots of small shops, interesting looking restaurants and bars. The baseball stadium for the Durham Bulls appears to be a big center piece here. Oh how I wish our politicians were a little more competent.
It is maybe a little more small town than downtown Syracuse but nice. There are a lot of mission style bungalows in the neighborhoods surrounding downtown. Many have recently been restored and a bunch more are in the process of being rescued. Yuppies here are flipping these aging houses for big bucks in large numbers. Great to see. Syracuse is doing some of this but more is needed. I wonder if they have better incentives there to encourage this? Someone from Syracuse should take a look.
The Duke campus is really nice. Everything has the same Gothic scheme, the same colors, look and feel. The lot we tailgated at was reasonably close to the stadium (maybe 3 or 4 blocks away). That is great for an ACC venue. Get this; we didn't have to pay. I think that is a first for any road trip I have ever taken to any football game ever.
I know others have complained about having difficulty finding the lot but we had no problems and we only got to the lot about 1/5 hours before the game. Kind of shocked to see a lot of open spaces in a lot that close to the stadium that close to game time.
The tailgate was well attended, well organized and the Sahlens we ingested were cooked perfectly (nice job
Cusejuicy). Jim and Kevin did a great job cooking and there was a lot to eat and drink. So kudos to all involved, including Mark's NC minions that I am sure helped him make it happen.
As always, it was great to see some old friends and nice to make some new acquaintances. I won't try to name everyone I ran into but I am thankful we have these nice tailgates for our away games and I love seeing big turnouts anywhere we play games.
I went to a couple of BBQ places when I was down there. I think the Raleigh area is near the NC BBQ line. The eastern part of the state likes their BBQ sauce vinegar based. The sauce used is almost clear and very acidic. I think it either completely or almost completely made of apple cider vinegar based on what I tasted but I could be wrong. But when you order BBQ there, you can get what they call a western Carolina sauce as well, which appeared to be more of a traditional sweet BBQ sauce you might find in Tennessee, mixed with vinegar. It is a hybrid sauce for a region stuck between two areas with wildly different BBQ tastes. I like the vinegar sauce and and I like the traditional sweet sauce but found the mix so strong in sweet and sour tastes that I couldn't taste the meat much.
Anyway, Duke's stadium is old. It was built in 1929. Until recently, it had a capacity of 35K, but it is now up to 40K. It has a horseshoe shape and there is no way to walk around the whole stadium from the inside, which is quite unfortunate. It reminded me some of Archbold in that it has only one deck, where the seats and the field are all located below ground level. It has the same problems Archbold had where the seats are far from the field and the slope is quite flat, so the seats near the top of the stadium are shockingly far from the field. That said, with no second deck, it is so small that even the 'bad' seats are not bad. It looks like they recently installed individual seats, which kept my butt away from the cold concrete and probably saved some lives Saturday night.
When we were at the tailgate, it was at a lot that was surrounded by trees and there was little breeze. When we moved to the stadium, that changed. There is nothing surrounding the stadium so the wind whipped down and provided a strong and effective chilling force all game long. It just got worse when the sun set, darkness moved in and the temperature started dropping more.
A saving grace was a heated bathroom (no Rags, no pee troughs) not too far away.
The food was pretty pedestrian. They did have Bojangles and hot chocolate.
It was hard to tell what fans were rooting for what teams as many wear non descript dark jackets to keep them warm. No question it was a really small crowd. No question the Syracuse fans were far louder. My guess is that there were 8K in the stands and maybe 3K were SU fans.
The Duke fans were classy and I thought they took what had to be a devastating loss very well. I felt bad for them. A lot of them were old. As others have mentioned, there was no student section, at least not one that could be identified as a student section. That was a first for me. but I have only been to about 40 college venues.
I knew we were in good shape when the teams came out and most of the Duke players wore big dark cloaks over their uniforms. Their body language was terrible all game long. It really looked like they just wanted the game to be over. The Syracuse players had no coats and were active and engaged the entire game.
Regarding the game, I thought the defense , freed to finally play more aggressively, finally played up to their potential. Remember when Shy's dad gave some insights into the frustrations the linebackers felt last year? I think that applied to the whole defense. Anyway, it was good to see. After the first few possessions, Duke struggled to much on offense. It seemed every time they got in the red zone, disaster ensured.
It was a weird game. Duke had more first downs, had the ball more, and almost completely shut down out passing game. who would have thought our running game would suddenly become effective?
It was really windy so there was some risk throwing the ball. Devito's numbers were not good and he missed some throws badly (at least one sure TD was just thrown away with a bad pass). In fairness, it was really cold and really windy and the conditions were not conducive for a big night passing.
And he also had a couple of big gains lost because of drops and Trish had a big gain lost when he couldn't get his foot down in time on the sideline.
The biggest thing was, he didn't come close to throwing an interception. With those conditions, that was big. I am impressed with how much better he has become making decisions and not forcing things when they are not there. Good to see.
It looks like with the new config of the OL, we are a much better running team. It looks like we can pass block better too though we didn't pass much and there was significant pressure sometimes when we did.
It was great to see Moe have a big day playing his last game for Syracuse in North Carolina, in front of friends and family. I still think he was miscast as a RB and wonder what could have happened if he was made in to a WR but we didn't have a lot of options at RB when he was starting out, and he has developed into a pretty darn good player for us.
It looks like Howard is beginning to pull away from Adams in the race for the top backup slot at RB. He has been impressive in recent weeks and deserves more snaps.
Speaking of more snaps, I, like others, hope Benson and Jordan get more PT down the stretch. We need more speed and athletic ability on the field. It is apparent we are not as talented as many others in the ACC. Let's address that. Would love to see Jordan get some snaps at WR. Along with the other Jordan. More Jordans in general please.
I don't know what happened, but it was nice to finally have a game this year where our team looked disciplined and was almost penalty free. I can't believe how many things we have (rightly) been called for penalties. This goes for the offense, the defense and special teams. All have been bad, especially special teams.
My first two road trips were the Maryland and Florida State games, and it was quite horrific to see the carnage in person. Those experiences had me feeling like I was bad mojo and I thought about not coming to this one. Glad I did. Glad to see our bowl game changes extended one more week. Glad to finally see this team play a good game this year.
If we could somehow manage to upset UL this weekend, and make the WF game mean something (don't like our chances to get an invite with a 5-7 record), that would be awesome.
Let's go Cuse! Shock the world! (Or at least a part part of Kentucky).
