Duke
Elko: Hats off to Notre Dame, they made more plays than we did
Duke coach, Mike Elko discusses the Duke loss to Notre Dame on Saturday night.
Yeah, first of all, thank you to the Duke community. I thought we really showed out today uh from college game day in the beginning of the day all the way through. That was an amazing atmosphere. Thank you to our students. Uh I thought we packed that place. I thought that was as great a crowd and as great an atmosphere you could have ever hoped for. And that certainly was the home field advantage that we hoped Wade could become. And so thank you to everyone who came, came to be part of it has off Notre Dame, you know, they, they won the game and they made more plays than we did. They converted the critical plays and they made some big plays on special teams. And so, you know, credit to them and credit to the job they did. Um, you know, from our standpoint. Um You know, we just, we didn't play a real good game, you know, that's just the reality of it. You know, we, we didn't start real well, you know, giving up the fake punt was obviously a huge momentum swing. We've been really good on special teams. We weren't today. Um, you know, we weren't able to get a lot of drives together in the first half. We missed a couple of field goals played about as bad as we could possibly play in the first half. And then, you know, the, the resiliency and the character of this team is unquestioned and, and I think you saw that again in the second half. I thought they battled their tails off. Um, they fought, they fought and they got themselves back in a position where, um, you know, we had a chance to win the game. You know, we were up 14, 13 and we pin the punt down there, which I thought was the right move and tried to force them to go the long way and, you know, we got them into 1/4 and 16 and, you know, unfortunately, we just, we just didn't get that executed and that point we probably sold out a little bit, um, on the next run and, and this team was able to break free for the touchdown. And so, um, unfortunately, that's how it ended and, uh, you know, it hurts, it hurts for these kids. They put a lot into this. Um, I think, you know, hopefully they'll take from this what they're capable of and the confidence to go on the rest of the way and, and continue to battle this thing. We've got a really good football team. Uh, we just got some things that we got to clean up. So from there, I'll open it up to questions Mr Brown. You want the second level or further? Yeah, I mean, when, when you drop eight, when you drop eight like that, um, you build a five underneath wall at, at the sticks and, and you have a hard time believing that a kid can scramble for 16 yards. And so, um, I just got to go back and look and see what went wrong. It was hard to see live. But, um, you know, obviously, you know, you drop eight in that long yarded situation because you think the scramble is out of play and you just try to flood the coverage. And, um, you know, in hindsight, maybe we should have just kept pressure and I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we challenged the guys at half time that we had to get to run the football. You know, the boxes were loaded, they were loaded all night. It made it really hard, but, but we just, we were just out of sync a little bit in the first half. And so, you know, we had to get back to playing within the chains a little bit more. We got into a lot of third and long in the first half and that's not a recipe for us to have success. And so we had to get out there and we had to find ways to establish the run. I thought we were able to do that a lot better in the second half. But, you know, obviously not enough. Yeah, we're not looking for positive reinforcement. We're looking to win football games and that's what we're here for. So this team believes in who they are, they believe in what they're capable of. There wasn't one kid in that locker room that thought we were going to go on the stage and not be able to compete with Notre Dame. Nobody thought this was a massive landslide in our ability to go out there and play this game. We're playing to win football games and we did it tonight because we didn't make enough plays and hats off to Notre Dame. They did. Yeah, we'll have to find out as we go through the week kind of where he's at. Um I don't think it impacted the play call and, you know, we, we graham suffered a upper body injury in the uconn game and so we kind of knew he was out all week and um so it's not like that thing kind of sprung up on us. It just, um you know, we put a plan together, um you know, felt like at times we executed at times. We didn't. Yeah, I'm heartbroken, heartbroken. You're 4th and 16 away from being number 11, Notre Dame and going into the biweekly five and oh, so heartbroken how, how surprising disappointed. Um I mean, both, I mean, both. I mean, they're killers you know, I mean, you give up a fake punt like that where we didn't execute real well what we were trying to do and we didn't really even challenge it. Um, you know, we missed the field goal early. We get ourselves back in position at the end of the half to make it a one score game and we miss a chip shot. Um, you know, it makes it hard. So, yeah, I mean, it's disappointing. It's surprising. I got a lot of confidence in those guys. I mean, Todd's a great kicker. He's been great for us from day one, you know, for whatever reason today, it just wasn't his day. No, it was a, it was a 50 yarder and so it was a 50 yarder and I really didn't feel like that was something that was worth it. Um, you know, that, that pooch point is something we've worked on since we got here with Riley and we felt confident that if we could pin them back there, we thought we'd be able to make the stop. We've been playing really good on defense and their kid had such a strong leg that they didn't have to, you know, that kid could probably have made it from about 55 60. And so if we gave them the ball around the 33 yard line, that didn't look like a recipe for success for us, why we come at a good time, Mike or what you guys want. Um No, it's probably the right time, get our guys healthy, get our guys back. Um get these guys refocused. Uh You know, we got a lot of big goals in front of us. We got a lot of big opportunities in front of us. Um You know, obviously this team believes that they can still compete for a lot of our goals and opportunities the rest of the season. And so none of that is lost. We haven't lost anything tonight. We lost a game against Notre Dame. Um, we didn't make enough plays but, but all of our goals for the season are still in place. We still got a strong locker room. Um, you know, they'll hurt for a little while and then we'll come back and we'll get back to work and, and get ready for NC State. Yeah, just play our game, just get back to playing our game. You know, we just were, we were so so out of sync at times and, um, you know, we had to get physical for sure. I don't think we, we controlled the line of scrimmage at all. I thought we got beat up up front pretty good in the first half and, and, you know, the second half, we didn't, I thought the second half we played a lot better on the offensive line. Yeah, I think that's, that's what it was, you know, they were playing so much, man, we were trying to just displace some of those guys and get them moving around a little bit to try to create a little bit of seams. But at the end of the day, we just, we blocked a little bit better in the second half and then we were able to get the ball in our running backs hands a little bit and they were able to get some things going and, um, you know, that's probably something we should have got to a little bit sooner. That's, that's my fault. But, um, you know, it, it got us where we needed to be, um, to have a chance to win the football game. Good. Thanks guys. I appreciate you.