North Carolina has a lot of football left to play, but the Tar Heels may well have drawn the blue print for how one saves a football season.

Start with Thursday night's 20-17 come-from-behind victory against Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.

Playing in Lane Stadium, one of the toughest places in the nation to compete on ESPN's weekly Thursday game, just one week after humiliating itself by blowing a 24-6 lead against Florida State, Carolina showed everything coaches and a fan base could want from a group of college kids.

"You want to talk about somebody who bonded together and pulled for each other," Coach Butch Davis said. "They never gave up -- on themselves more than anything else.

"This is an unbelievable win for our football program."

Fast forward to the next game, at 3 p.m. on Saturday at Kenan Stadium against Duke. The Blue Devils have been improved steadily this season, and the last thing this Carolina team needs to do is blow this game.

Now is the time for these Tar Heels to take all the improvement they have built on during the last month and take a giant leap forward.

The time also has arrived for Davis to show that he now understands how important it is for Carolina to squash Duke. The same goes for N.C. State and Wake Forest.

Carolina needs to make those program non-factors for Davis to take total control of this state in recruiting and dominate its football landscape

The kids have to show some maturity as well.

They cannot get caught up in the win against Virginia Tech anymore than they would have had they moped after the gut-wrenching loss to Florida State.

The Tar Heels showed clearly that they never stopped to feel sorry for themselves after what was an agonizing defeat by the Seminoles. Now they need to approach practice in the same way they did last week if they want to finish this season strong and keep playing football during the holidays.

This program did not fall apart in a year or two, and even Davis cannot rebuild it to the glory years of Mack Brown in a two or three years. That comes with recruiting and winning these kinds of games -- games such as last season's victories against Miami and Notre Dame. And now, at Virginia Tech.

The defense should have regained itself self-respect and confidence, and the offense has obviously not stopped improving from the low point of Georgia Tech and Virginia, no matter what adversity may have arisen along the way.

"Our offense did a great job against an unbelievable defense," Davis said. "When we got down, made the bad play, we came back and then made the great play, the strip of the ball on defense."

For all the abuse he has taken this year, it is only fair that offense coordinator John Shoop gets some credit for Thursday's game plan. There was only one truly bad sequence all night, which was T.J. Yates getting caught in a bad situation that led to an interception.

Defensive coordinator Everett Withers still played things a little too softly at times in the second half, but he tightened up, and his men pulled Carolina's fat out of the fire with the forced fumble and recovery late in the game.

"There was trials and adversity in that second half," Davis said. "It would have been very easy for a lot of guys to jump back into, 'Well, here it goes again; it's last week.' Our guys said ... 'We're going to win this game.'"

The rest of the schedule is going to be tough. This team will continue to walk a fine line, and turnovers will play a huge role in every game down the stretch. The key is to stay focused, keep improving the way this club has all year, and let the rest take care of itself.

- chn -