Bowl preview: Duke breaks bowl drought

DeWayne Carter figures he spends just about every hour of his life with his Duke football teammates.

Though the fourth-year defensive tackle never been around them at this time of year.

“I’m just excited to experience a bowl game,” Carter said before the Blue Devils arrived for the Military Bowl. “I mean, I haven’t been to one. And the last time they went to one was my senior year of high school.”

Duke’s bowl drought ended with the announcement that the Blue Devils would play UCF in the Military Bowl, a game that will kick off Wednesday afternoon in Annapolis, Md.

A program-revitalization under first-year coach Mike Elko saw Duke go 8-4 this season; the reward has been this week’s trip to Washington, D.C. and the surrounding excursions, such as a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, packing care packages for service members, and of course, a bowling trip.

And now, the actual game.

“It’s been a great week for us. We came up here on the 23rd, really got to do a lot of good things together as a team,” Elko said Monday, before running down some of Duke’s itinerary of the week. “Been balancing it all this week, and now really starting to set our sights on Central Florida for the last 48 hours.”

UCF is next up, and Duke can win its ninth game of a season for the third time since World War II by knocking off the Knights.

Afterward, the focus will shift to even loftier goals in 2023.

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Here’s a primer on what you need to know for Wednesday’s Military Bowl:

Time: 2 p.m.

Location: Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, Annapolis, Md.

TV: ESPN.

Announcers: Kevin Brown (play-by-play), Hutson Mason (analyst), Marilyn Payne (sidelines).

Forecast: Mid-40s, sunny, winds around 7 mph at kickoff; low-40s, clear, winds around 3-4 mph by game’s end.

Series; last meeting: First meeting.

Records: UCF 9-4; Duke 8-4.

Stat to watch: Multiple.

Couldn’t pick just one, so here’s the rundown of some stats that show these teams as a good matchup:

UCF points per game: 34.4 | Duke points per game: 33.1.

UCF points allowed/game: 23.2 | Duke points allowed/game: 22.8.

UCF yards/rush attempt: 5.3 | Duke yards/rush attempt: 5.0.

UCF passing yards/game: 244.5 | Duke passing yards/game: 236.4.

UCF passing yards/attempt: 7.6 | Duke passing yards/attempt: 7.6.

UCF yards/play: 6.3 | Duke yards/play: 6.2.

UCF yards allowed/game: 382.3 | Duke yards allowed/game: 383.3.

It’s obviously not all this simple, and there are a bunch of stats that illustrate some advantages — passing yards for Duke, opponent red zone scores for UCF.

But these teams were a lot more similar than they were different over the course of the regular season.

Opposing offensive player to watch: Quarterback John Rhys Plumlee (No. 10).

Not just any old default pick-the-QB selection here.

Plumlee is the engine for both phases of UCF’s offense, leading the Knights in rushing (841 yards and 11 touchdowns) in addition to passing for 2,404 yards and 14 touchdowns.

UCF was 6-0 when Plumlee accounted for multiple touchdowns this season and 3-4 when he didn’t.

The other reason you’ve got to watch Plumlee, especially early, is that he was hobbled late in the season by a hamstring injury.

Plumlee wasn’t full strength in UCF’s loss to Tulane in the AAC championship game — a team the Knights beat in mid-November — and it showed. Plumlee had 176 rushing yards and two touchdowns in the regular-season win over the Green Wave, and had minus-7 yards in the AAC championship.

The Blue Devils will prepare for Plumlee to be at his best, given the extra rest.

“When you get into bowl games, a lot of those nagging injuries toward the end of the season tend to go away,” Elko said of Plumlee. “We expect him to be very dangerous, he’s obviously a very athletic player, certainly have studied a lot of his tape from earlier in the year, before the injury.

“We certainly expect him to be the full version of himself.”

Opposing defensive player to watch: Defensive end Tre’mon Morris-Brash (No. 33).

As a reminder, one of the picks here is linebacker Jason Johnson, who was already kind of highlighted in the five things to know about UCF earlier this month.

That means we move to UCF’s best pass-rusher, Morris-Brash.

The 6-2, 245-pounder led the Knights with six sacks — no other player had more than three — and 13 tackles for loss (second had 8½).

It stands out that Morris-Brash has played the third-most snaps of any player on UCF’s defense, and that fellow defensive end Josh Celiscar has played the second-most. Celiscar played 776 of 907 total snaps (85.6%) and Morris-Brash played 738 (81.4%). (all snap counts via Pro Football Focus)

By comparison: Carter has played the highest percentage of snaps for any Duke defensive lineman, and he only played 594 out of 845 snaps (70.3%) this season.

Young Blue Devil to watch: Freshman cornerback Chandler Rivers (No. 0).

Duke signed six defensive backs this month, three of them — Quentin Ajiero, Moussa Kane and Kimari Robinson — coming in as cornerbacks.

If any of them is as good and promising as Rivers has been this season, the Blue Devils will be in decent shape at a crucial position.

Rivers played 26.3 snaps per game in the first half of the season, and 62.5 snaps per game in the second half. The impressive part of that is with more snaps, Rivers played better; his average Pro Football Focus grade in the first half was 53.1.

Rivers’ average PFF grade in the second half was 65.1.

The prediction here is that Rivers caps an impressive freshman season with his first interception.

Don’t forget about: Wide receiver Jalon Calhoun (No. 5).

Calhoun went over 90 yards three times in the first four games before hitting a lull — with a reminder that he was injured after the first drive against Georgia Tech and essentially missed the game — and failing to record more than 70 yards in the next five games.

A late flourish to the regular season puts Calhoun within shouting distance of a 1,000-yard season.

Calhoun broke loose with five catches for 94 yards — all in the first half — against Virginia Tech, and then after a modest game at Pittsburgh, the fourth-year receiver had career-bests in yards (174) and catches (11) against Wake Forest.

That put the 5-11, 189-pounder from Greenville, S.C., at 811 yards this season. If he puts up his listed weight or more, Calhoun would be Duke’s first 1,000-yard receiver since Jamison Crowder in 2014.

Calhoun currently ranks fifth and ninth in program history in catches (197) and receiving yards (2,298), respectively. He’s a senior but has one season of eligibility remaining and did not participate in Senior Day festivities this season.

Prediction: It feels like a lot of how this goes depends on how healthy Plumlee is. If UCF’s quarterback is back to full strength and his hamstring isn’t a problem anymore, this could turn into a high-scoring affair.

If he’s still limited, given the number of other players UCF is missing, Duke should have a sizable advantage.

This becomes a matter of Duke both capping off a memorable season and using this as a launching point into 2023.

The gray area between those is hittable. Duke has a few departing standouts — Darius Joiner, Andre Harris Jr., Chance Lytle, among others — who can ride off with wins to end their careers, and a few other reasons to be optimistic about next season.

Duke can simultaneously close the book on a program-altering 2022 while setting the stage for an even better 2023.