Illinois’ record when hitting the road to face a high-major non-conference foe isn’t pretty.Here’s the hefty historical burden No. 11 Illinois (1-0) carries into Saturday afternoon’s visit to Duke (1-0): In 2023, the Bret Bielema-coached Illini lost at Kansas by 11. Two years before that, they got beaten by 28 at Virginia.But the woes go back much further than the Bielema era.In 2015, Tim Beckman’s bunch lost by 34 at North Carolina. The year before that, they took a 25-point whipping at Washington. And don’t forget the 45-14 defeat in 2012 at Arizona State. Even Ron Zook contributed to this streak with a 49-36 loss in 2009 at fifth-ranked Cincinnati.You need to rewind the calendar back to Sept. 15, 2007, to find a road win against a power-conference non-league opponent: Illinois’ 41-20 victory at Syracuse. That Zook team went on to play in the Rose Bowl.This Illinois squad has similar dreams of postseason grandeur — and a win over a Duke crew that has won 17 of its last 20 games at home would go a decent way to making the Illini real.”I’m really excited to get out there and play a good team on the road and really see exactly what we’ve got from our guys,” Bielema said.Neither Illinois nor Duke was truly tested in Week 1 by its FCS opponents. The Illini built a 31-0 halftime lead on the way to a 52-3 win over Western Illinois while the Blue Devils shrugged off a 10-10 halftime knot to wallop Elon 45-17.”Offensively, we started slow. That seemed to be the theme of the (college football) weekend,” said Duke second-year coach Manny Diaz. “A little uptight, maybe?Getting some timing down. And then we felt like we got into a rhythm. The way we played in the second half gave us a lot of confidence going forward.”The Elon game served as Darian Mensah’s Duke debut — and his performance suggested his multimillion-dollar NIL payday was well-deserved. The Tulane transfer drilled 27 of 34 passes for 389 yards and three scores.
