David Cutcliffe: Virginia loss was "a horrific setback"

Coach wants team to move on

David Cutcliffe wasn’t happy about Duke’s 48-7 loss to Virginia, but he doesn’t want to dwell on it.

“When you have a big game, you’d better turn it around,” he said.

Duke has a big game, against arch rival UNC.

“What I told the team Saturday night up there—there wasn’t time to say a lot of things—I said, ‘This has been a horrific setback,’” Cutcliffe said, “and it was. It hurt. It was a horrific setback.”

Cutcliffe told the team, “This cannot be a setback tomorrow.”

The coach was pleased that the team received the message. “I thought they did a good job, certainly knowing they were getting ready to play a rival and another conference game, you don’t have the luxury (of dwelling on a loss),” he said.

That doesn’t mean Cutcliffe burned the tape of the Virginia game. There was plenty to learn from the loss.

“There were a lot of them,” he said of mistakes that needed correcting after he reviewed game film. “It took me a long time Sunday to make notes for the staff, certainly, addressing all the things you have to address. Correcting things in the kicking game. On offense and defense, we do corrections, then we introduce the base of next team we play. Sunday, we had a lot of things we need corrected. I think they embraced it.”

Many of the mistakes were small things, but that doesn’t mean they were minor.

“The quality of a route, the quality of the exchange, the most minute things can become major things,” he said. “The way to correct it is to absolutely coach the little things better.”