There was one play, a third down on offense in (I think) the second half when we were driving toward the closed end of the stadium. Mason was in at RB, and I guess a Duke lineman or LB was jawing at him before the snap. Mason gave him a "come and get some" hand gesture, and then they had a pretty good blocking battle during the play. The play ended with a pass toward the Tech sideline that was either incomplete or short - we ended up having to punt - but I liked that little bit of swagger I saw from Mason on that play.
It was a good trip to Duke despite the rain, BTW. Temperature was pleasant, and the rain was really only a strong drizzle at worst until we were walking back to the car afterwards. It was one of the worst-attended games I've ever seen, with an announced attendance of around 11K - with most of the Duke fans clustered under the press box overhang on the home sideline, it really made the stadium look empty. Their student section was maybe 50 people, and I'm pretty sure the band we brought was bigger than theirs. But hey, cheap tickets, good food options, free parking/shuttle ride, pretty campus - what's not to like other than the sedate game environment?
It was odd that they were sort of enforcing a mask mandate - had to mask up to ride the parking shuttle, to enter the stadium, and to buy concessions. Technically you were supposed to be masked in the stands, but it seemed like most everybody was ignoring that and nobody was enforcing it.
I can't say that I came away from the game happy - it was fun when it looked like we were going to run away early, then it was a frustrating slog to inevitable defeat. Good on the team for making a great comeback at the end, but I found it hard to derive much joy from it. Hopefully it wasn't a fluke and I'll look back at this game as when I started (re-)learning not to give up on this team, but right now I'm still mostly in the "expecting to lose" zone.
I don't know what was going on with the injuries - I think I counted 9 or 10 guys that went down on the field, plus at least one other guy that got off the field and had to be attended to by the trainers on the sideline with what looked like a hand injury. It seemed really lopsided - I think Duke only had 1 or 2 guys go down. (Most of ours came back into the game, but at least a couple didn't, from what I could tell.)
I don't know who should be more frustrated on Duke's team - Durant with his 198 touches on the day (isn't there literally anybody else on the team that can share the load?) or literally everybody else on the offense that was almost entirely window dressing for Durant.
JRjr
