It’s taken two fourth-quarter comebacks, but Duke football coach [autotag]Manny Diaz[/autotag] still has not lost a game through three weeks.
Eight days after the Blue Devils beat Northwestern on the road in overtime, Diaz’s team scored nine points over the final 15 minutes to beat Connecticut 26-21 on Saturday night.
With the win, Diaz became the seventh Blue Devils head coach to start his tenure with three straight wins. In fact, he and his predecessor Mike Elko are the only coaches since 2000 to achieve that feat this century.
The legendary Steve Spurrier also started 3-0, as did Fred Goldsmith, Mike McGee, Tom Harp, and Floyd J. Egan (who did so in 1920).
Of the five previous coaches who started 3-0 since World War II, three of them stayed with the program for at least five seasons. The only two who didn’t, Elko and Spurrier, left for a head coach job in the SEC.
Diaz hopes to start 4-0 with a win over Middle Tennessee in Week 4.