Wake Forest 14, Duke 13

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Posted 8:23PM on Saturday, September 9, 2006

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Wake Forest needed every last second to win a game that Duke seemed determined to give away Saturday. Micah Andrews ran for the go-ahead touchdown with 1:28 left while Chip Vaughn blocked Joe Surgan's 28-yard field goal attempt on the final play to lead the Demon Deacons past the Blue Devils 14-13, giving them their seventh straight win in the series. Riley Skinner threw for 235 yards and a score in his first start for the Demon Deacons (2-0, 1-0 Atlantic Coast Conference). The victory gave Wake Forest a 2-0 start for the first time since 2003, and allowed coach Jim Grobe to tie the school record with 14 ACC wins here. ``I don't know that the team that played the best won today,'' Grobe said. ``Honestly I wasn't happy with any part of our football team today. ... It was one of those games that I'm really proud that we won and our kids found a way to win.'' On the other side, the Blue Devils got a stellar effort from freshman quarterback Thaddeus Lewis and a solid defensive performance yet still lost their 10th straight game overall. Duke outplayed Wake Forest much of the way only to be undone by a dizzying display of ineptitude that prevented them from building a big first-half lead. The mistakes included two fumbles lost deep in Wake Forest territory and a missed short field goal, which grew costlier as the game went on. ``The first half I thought we left some points out of the field,'' Duke coach Ted Roof said. ``We had some turnovers and we had some missed field goals. When you don't make those, you don't win football games.'' It was hard to imagine the Demon Deacons would need such late-game heroics to beat Duke, which was coming off a humbling 13-0 home loss to Division I-AA Richmond. Wake Forest had won three of the previous four meetings by at least 26 points, including a 44-6 road win last year in which the Demon Deacons ran for 419 yards. The Demon Deacons, however, found a way thanks to a pair of youngsters pressed into duty by injury. Skinner started in place of Benjamin Mauk, who had season-ending surgery this week after suffering a broken right arm and dislocated right shoulder during last week's win against Syracuse. The redshirt freshman got off to a slow start, but went 13-for-16 for 182 yards after halftime. That included throwing for 58 yards on 4-for-5 passing to lead Wake Forest's final scoring drive, which ended when Andrews ran it in from 2 yards out for the 14-13 lead. ``I don't know about growing up,'' Skinner said of his second-half play. ``I think it was just the whole mentality that we knew we had to get the ball in the end zone. We couldn't keep taking field goals and things like that.'' Meanwhile, Vaughn, a redshirt sophomore, earned playing time when starting safety Josh Gattis went down with a hip injury in the third quarter. He made his biggest play after the Blue Devils put together an impressive drive aided by two pass-interference penalties to set up Surgan's kick with 6 seconds left. ``I just thought, 'It's the last play of the game, so I might as well jump for it,''' Vaughn said. ``All game, I saw him just shoot line drives, so I thought I might have a chance to block it.'' Once the ball was snapped, Vaughn leapt from behind the line and swatted the kick with his right arm, sending the Demon Deacons spilling onto the field in celebration as the game ended. Lewis played well in his first career start, completing 21-of-32 passes for 305 yards and a touchdown. Jomar Wright had the Blue Devils' only touchdown, a 47-yard grab from Lewis late in the second quarter that gave Duke a 10-0 halftime lead. But Duke's players went into the break knowing they should have had a much bigger lead. The list of gaffes seemed endless. Wright dropped a perfect deep ball from Lewis that would've gone for an easy touchdown on the first play, and Surgan missed a 27-yard field goal to end that drive. Lewis fumbled away an option pitch to end a drive at the Wake Forest 15. A roughing-the-passer penalty by Michael Tauiliili negated an interception by Chris Davis and the ensuing 46-yard return. And Re'quan Boyette fumbled at the 1-yard line and into the end zone for a touchback. ``It's hard losing,'' Lewis said, ``but you've got to have a short-term memory. We still have more of the season left and we have another game next week, so we've got to put this behind us.'' Wake Forest's biggest highlight before the frantic finale was a school-record 86-yard punt from Sam Swank. The redshirt sophomore kicked from his own 14-yard line, then watched the ball take a favorable bounce and eventually roll into the end zone for a touchback. (Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)