The Duke Blue Devils (6-2, 3-1) kick off against the #11 Florida State Seminoles (7-1, 4-1) at 3:30 p.m. in Doak Campbell Stadium on Saturday.
FSU enters Saturday’s game ranked 11th nationally and atop the Atlantic Coast Conference's Atlantic Division while Duke is off to its best start since 1994 and sits atop the Coastal Division.
The last time these two teams have squared off with significant ramifications was 1994, when #9 FSU routed #No. 16 Duke, 59-20, at Doak Campbell Stadium.
Decisive advantage
The Seminoles hold a distinct historical advantage in the series against the Blue Devils with a perfect 17-0 record with the most recent win, a 41-16 decision, over Duke coming last season.Florida State’s mastery of Duke in the all-time series ranks as one of the most dominant among conference opponents in league history as FSU is tied for the second-longest winning streak among ACC opponents.
Duke is the lone ACC team that has not defeated FSU in its 21 seasons of conference membership.
Monday punts for
Ray Guy Award
A big part of Duke's success this season has been its ability to place the ball effectively in punting situations, the responsibility of redshirt
freshman kicker Will Monday.
As a result, Monday was named as one of 69 nominees on the Ray Guy
Award watch list, as announced on Friday by the Augusta Sports Council.
Monday, one of
only six freshmen on the award nominee list, leads the ACC and ranks eighth
nationally with 45.77 yards per punt, kicking 39 punts for a total of 1,785
yards.
Monday leads ACC on Saturdays
Monday is the only player in the ACC with two punts of at least 60 yards and currently ranks second on Duke’s single-season punting average list, trailing only Steve Lach who averaged 45.89 yards per punt for the Blue Devils in 1941.
Monday has averaged no less than 43.5 yards per punt in each of Duke’s eight games this season.
He has made a punt of at least 50 yards and has placed a punt inside an opponent’s 20-yard line in every game this season.
During his weekly teleconference leading up to the Florida State game, Duke coach David Cutcliffe had the following to say about his kicker:
"Will has been accurate, has great hang time - he really has stepped up and taken challenges. I think that last punt in that last ballgame (against North Carolina) was indicative of the year he's had when he put that ball and pinned them inside the 10-yard-line we ended up giving up the score. But the kicking game and what he did is exactly what you want a guy to do, so he is a weapon."
Guy Award background
The Augusta Sports Council created the Ray Guy Award in 2000 to honor Thomson, Georgia native and College Football Hall of Fame inductee Ray Guy.
The Ray Guy Award winner must display team leadership, self-discipline, and have a positive impact on the team’s success and is determined by a national voting body of sports writers, college coaches, sports information directors, and past Ray Guy Award winners.
The voting body uses a variety of statistics to determine the successful recipient by comparing net punting average, number of times a punt is downed or kicked out of bounds inside the opponents 20-yard line, total yardage punted, average returned yardage, and percentage of punts not returned.
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