Saturday’s ACC Football Championship game featured a couple of teams that probably would have been considered longshots – at best – to be playing at the season’s end for bragging rights in a conference that includes perennial powerhouses like Clemson and Florida State.
But the matchup between the Duke Blue Devils and the Virginia Cavaliers turned out to be a pretty good game, with Duke knocking off UVA in overtime and avenging a 34-17 thumping during the regular season.
This is Duke’s first football ACC conference title since 1989 and their first outright title since 1962, according to WIZS’s Scout Hughes, who reviewed some of the highlights during Monday’s SportsTalk with Doc Ayscue.
“From start to finish, it was a great game,” Ayscue said. He binged championship college football all weekend, and Hughes drove to Charlotte to see the game in person.
Ayscue said Duke’s lackluster time management let the ‘Hoos get back into the game.
With his team down by 10 late in the game, Head Coach Tony Elliott watched his team work the clock, kick a field goal and then, with 22 seconds left in regulation, score a touchdown and PAT to tie the game.
“All of a sudden, we’re in overtime,” Hughes recalled.
Duke got the ball first in the overtime period and scored. It was up to the Cavaliers to answer that score, but the Blue Devils defense had other plans. A quick interception and, just like that, the game was over.
In a post-game press conference Duke Head Coach Manny Diaz, with QB Darien Mensah at his side, said he was proud of his team, “proud to be an ACC champion – the pride we have at doing things at Duke that haven’t been done in a long time.”
Mensah followed up by saying “Theres no better feeling. That’s exactly why I’m at Duke.” The Tulane transfer said he and Coach Diaz had talked about what it would mean to bring home a championship to a school that’s so well-known for its winning basketball program.
“I think that’s a statement that me and the seniors on this team really have tried to make. I’ve been saying this: I’m just a piece of this puzzle. Duke is extremely special and I’m just glad to be a part of it.”
The Duke win spoiled UVA’s hopes to get added to the list of 12 teams playing for the college football championship. Cavaliers Coach Elliott, though disappointed after the game, put a positive spin on the outcome.
“I don’t like the outcome, but at the end of the day, our guys fought – they fought all the way to the end. They believed that we were going to win the game and we came up a few plays short,” Elliott said in the post-game press conference.
He said his players have “the heart of a champion…the football team that lost tonight came up a touchdown short,” but added that everybody in the locker room wants the opportunity to get an 11th win – a hint at post-season play.
“We’ll learn from tonight. We’ll grow…we’re going to grow and we’re going to bounce back…set our sights forward, learn from our mistakes and go back to work.”
UVA will face Missouri in the Gator Bowl on Saturday, Dec. 27 in Jacksonville, FL.
The Blue Devils will head to El Paso, TX to face the Arizona State Sun Devils in the Sun Bowl on New Year’s Eve.
For the record, UVA is a 7-point underdog. Duke’s favored by 1.5 points.
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