David Cutcliffe on Duke's Conditioning: We Have to Go to Plan B

Long break has Duke players behind schedule

Duke has been outscored in the fourth quarter of all three games this year, and Blue Devil coaches and players agree that the team’s conditioning has suffered due to the shortened spring practice and fall camp.

Duke is working to get caught up.

“There’s no question what you’re doing is different, because we measure,” David Cutcliffe said. “We have the science. We wear these monitors that give us player load, velocity, explosive numbers, and you can’t hardly match game numbers in a practice, but we measure every practice. We try to increase that load, as we started back in August. My eyes are pretty well trained eyes. I know when we’re getting there—your legs are under you, but there’s a fine line.”

Duke started from the first days players were on campus to try to get the team’s conditioning levels back up to par.

“We did a lot of running in August,” Cutcliffe said. “A lot of conditioning we don’t normally have to do, but this team was away 129 days without an organized workout, so it’s a process that’s still in place. But we have to practice—we have no choice—with the kind of quality you have to have to get better. One of the challenges in putting the practice schedule together is when your numbers get lower, it makes it much more difficult to practice with the tempo we like. We are reinventing the will a little bit.”

The Blue Devils lost a handful of players to opt outs before practice started, and they’ve lost several starters to injury, including center Jack Wohlabaugh and cornerbacks Josh Blackwell and Mark Gilbert.

“Hopefully, we’d stay healthy and have a full contingent in practice,” Cutcliffe said, “but that’s not happened that way, so you have to go to plan B. I think we will hopefully see this improve over the next two to three weeks to a level that we’re going to hit. We’re going to hit it, but we can’t wait. We’ve got to do it now, this week, Virginia Tech. We’ve got to put 60 minutes out there to have an opportunity to beat these guys, because they’re really good.”