Duke Blue Devils
The Duke Blue Devils are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Duke University, located in Durham, North Carolina. Duke's athletics department features 27 varsity teams that all compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I level. The name comes from the French "les Diables Bleus" or "the Blue Devils," which was the nickname given during World War I to the Chasseurs Alpins, the French Alpine light infantry battalion.
Duke joined the Southern Conference in 1929, and left in 1953 to become a founder of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
History
Teams for then Trinity College were known originally as the Trinity Eleven, the Blue and White or the Methodists. William H. Lander, as editor-in-chief, and Mike Bradshaw, as managing editor, of the Trinity Chronicle began the academic year 1922–23 referring to the athletic teams as the Blue Devils. The Chronicle staff continued its use and through repetition, Blue Devils eventually caught on.The Blue Devils have won 17 NCAA National Championships. The women's golf team has won seven, the men's basketball team has won five, men's lacrosse has won three, and the men's soccer and women's tennis teams have won one each. Duke's major historic rival, especially in basketball, has been the Tar Heels of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Duke has also captured 119 ACC Championships, 44 of which have come since 1999–2000. Duke's teams hold the longest streak of consecutive ACC Championships in women's tennis, women's golf, men's basketball, women's basketball and volleyball. The men's basketball, women's golf, and women's tennis lead individual programs, while men's tennis, volleyball, football, men's cross country, men's lacrosse, men's golf, men's soccer, women's basketball, baseball, women's cross country and women's lacrosse have also captured titles.
In the past five years, Duke has finished in the top 20 every year in the NACDA Director's Cup, an overall measure of an institution's athletic success. Most recently, Duke has finished 10th, 17th, 19th, 11th, eighth, and fifth. Duke has the smallest undergraduate enrollment of any institution that has been in the top 35 the past two years. Furthermore, Duke is the only school besides Stanford that has finished in the top 20 in the past three years that has fewer than 10,000 undergraduates.
Duke teams that have been ranked in the top ten nationally in the 2000s include men's and women's basketball, men's and women's tennis, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's cross country, men's and women's lacrosse, women's field hockey, and men's and women's golf. Eight of these teams were ranked either first or second in the country during 2004–05. According to a 2006 evaluation conducted by the NCAA, Duke's student-athletes have the highest graduation rate of any institution in the nation at 91%. Excluding students who leave or transfer in good academic standing, the graduation rate of student-athletes is 97%. There have been allegations that, like most other schools examined such as North Carolina, Duke's graduation rate may be inflated or be a result of athletes gravitating to easier courses and majors, though many have taken issue with such claims.
Teams
Baseball
, who became a first baseman for the Oakland Athletics, holds Duke's career home run record, the Duke career slugging percentage record, and the school's second-highest all-time batting average.Men's basketball
's men's basketball team is the fourth-winningest college basketball program of all time, particularly since 1980 under head coach Mike Krzyzewski, who is nicknamed "Coach K". They have won the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship five times, all under Krzyzewski, which is second behind the University of North Carolina for any ACC team, and have been in 18 Final Fours. Seventy-one players have been drafted in the NBA draft. Additionally, Duke has had an Academic All-American on the team 14 years. Duke has 23 Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championships, the most of any team in the ACC. Duke also has been the top seed in the ACC tournament 19 times. Duke is third, behind only UCLA and Kansas, in total weeks ranked as the number one team in the nation by the AP with 110 weeks. The Blue Devils have the third-longest streak in the AP Top 25 in history with 200 consecutive appearances from 1996 to 2007. This streak only trails UCLA's 221 consecutive polls from 1966 to 1980 as the longest of all-time and Kansas' 200 consecutive polls from 2009–present. The streak ended with the AP poll released on February 12, 2007.Women's basketball
During the 1990s and 2000s, the Duke women's basketball program has become a national powerhouse. Led by coach Gail Goestenkors from 1992 to 2007, Duke made ten NCAA Sweet Sixteen appearances, seven Elite Eight appearances, four Final Four appearances, and two appearances in the NCAA Championship game during her tenure.In the 2000–01 season, the Blue Devils posted a 30–4 record, won the ACC Tournament and ACC regular season championships, and earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The 2001–02 season produced similar success. She led the Blue Devils to a 31–4 record and an NCAA Final Four appearance. Duke became the first ACC school to produce an undefeated 19–0 record in the ACC by winning the regular season and Tournament titles.
Goestenkors led the Blue Devils to an ACC-record 35–2 ledger in the 2002–03 season and their second straight NCAA Final Four appearance. For the second consecutive year, Duke posted a 19–0 record against ACC opponents.
In 2003–04, with Player of the year Alana Beard leading the way, the Blue Devils advanced to the NCAA Elite Eight, and won a fourth-straight Atlantic Coast Conference regular season title and a fifth-straight ACC Tournament championship. Duke also broke the University of Connecticut's 76-game home winning streak with a 68–67 buzzer-beater victory in Hartford, Connecticut.
The 2006–07 season ended with a 32–2 record and notched the school's first ever undefeated regular season. This also set an NCAA-record seventh straight 30-win season. Goestenkors is often known as the "winningest coach not to have won a championship", having finished runner-up two times in fifteen years.
On April 18, 2007, Joanne P. McCallie, or Coach P, was introduced as the new coach of Duke's women's basketball team after Goestenkors left for the University of Texas.
Through 2011, the Blue Devils have won seven ACC Championships, the third most in the ACC.
Men's fencing
In 2018, Duke men's fencing won its first ACC championship in program history.Women's fencing
became an Assistant Fencing Coach at Duke University in August 2010, and held the position through 2013. While at Duke he mentored three-time NCAA women's saber champion Becca Ward. Half a dozen years later Kovacs was accused of sexually assaulting two fencing students elsewhere, and he died in prison in 2022.Former Duke three-time NCAA All-American fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad won a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympic Games, in the women's team sabre competition.
Women's field hockey
Duke is a Division I field hockey program. The field hockey program was established in 1971. Duke field hockey participates in the Atlantic Coast Conference.| Accomplishments | |
| All-Time Program Record | 487-418-17 |
| NCAA Tournament Appearances | 18 |
| ACC Regular Season Championship | 1 |
| NCAA Final Four Appearances | 6 |
| All-American Selections | 50 |
Williams Field at Jack Katz Stadium is home to the Duke Field Hockey team. The facility is located on the university's East campus at 705 Broad St., in Durham. The facility was completed in 1996, and then was renovated on 2011.
Football
The most famous Duke football season came in 1938, when Wallace Wade was head coach and the "Iron Dukes" were born. Wade shocked the college football world by leaving Alabama for Duke in 1930, later rationalizing the move by saying that Duke shared his belief that a school should provide its athletes with a strong academic background. Wade's success at Alabama translated well to Duke's program, most notably in 1938, when his "Iron Dukes" went unscored upon the entire regular season. Duke reached their first Rose Bowl appearance, where they lost 7–3 when USC scored a touchdown in the final minute of the game on a pass from a second-string quarterback to a third string tight end. Wade's Blue Devils lost another Rose Bowl to Oregon State in 1942, this one held at Duke's home stadium in Durham, North Carolina due to Pearl Harbor. Wade's achievements placed him in the Hall of Fame.The football program also had a string of successful years in the late 1980s when the team was coached by Steve Spurrier. Spurrier led the Blue Devils to three consecutive winning seasons from 1987 to 1989, culminating with the Blue Devils sharing the ACC title in 1989 and playing in the All-American Bowl, where the Blue Devils lost to Texas Tech. The 1989 ACC title was the last title won by a school in the state of North Carolina until Wake Forest won their second ACC crown in 2006.
The team also rose to prominence in 1994, the first season under coach Fred Goldsmith. The team raced out to an 8–1 record, and was briefly ranked as high as #13 in the country before losing the last two games of the season 24–23 to North Carolina State and 41–40 to arch-rival North Carolina. The 1994 team played in the program's first New Years Day Bowl game since 1962, falling to Wisconsin 34–21 in the Hall of Fame Bowl, now known as the Outback Bowl.
The Blue Devils are coached by Manny Diaz. They have won seven ACC Football Championships, which is the fourth most in the ACC trailing only Clemson, FSU, and Maryland. Ten ACC Football Players of the Year have come from Duke, the most in the ACC. Additionally, three 3 Pro Football Hall of Famers have come through Duke's program, second only to the Miami Hurricanes who have had 4 Hall of Famers, for the most in the ACC.
Duke is consistently ranked at or near the top of the list of FBS schools which graduate nearly all of their football players. Duke has topped the list 12 years, earning it the most Academic Achievement Awards of any university. Notre Dame has been honored six times, while Boston College and Northwestern have won the award four times each.