The Cavaliers struggled much of the afternoon but came through when it mattered most against Duke on Saturday. That seems to be the emerging personality of this young team, which now has a four-game winning streak - its longest in four years - after a shaky but satisfying 27-22 victory at Wallace Wade Stadium.

"Whatever it takes to get the 'W,' that's what we do," said safety Shernard Newby, who made an interception on the final play. "It really doesn't matter what it looks like. We'll take it."

Virginia (4-2, 2-1 ACC) prevailed yet again despite being outgained for the third straight week, this time by nearly 100 yards. The Cavaliers finished with two rushing yards, compared to 158 for Duke (2-4, 0-2). And through three quarters, UVa's passing game seemed to consist of three plays: short, shorter and backward.

Other than an 80-yard touchdown drive at the end of the first half, the Cavaliers had 44 yards of offense going into the final period. Their three possessions in the third quarter netted negative-3 yards.

But just as Virginia has done all season, it saved its best for last. Matt Schaub threw for 181 yards in the fourth quarter, leading two touchdown drives that broke open a tied game and sent the Blue Devils to their 19th straight ACC loss.

"In these kind of games, you can't just go rock along, whether it's on offense or defense," Groh said. "You need some playmakers. Some guys have to step forward and change the course of the game in your favor. ... We needed to make some plays and we had some real playmakers step up and make them."

The Cavaliers essentially put the game in the hands of Schaub, who entered rated third nationally in passing efficiency. They called pass plays on 20 of their first 22 offensive snaps, all but abandoning the run in the face of Duke's defense, which stacked the line of scrimmage.

But Schaub wasn't as sharp as usual. He misfired on midrange passes and often settled for short throws that gained little yardage. In the first three quarters, his 33 passes resulted in just 134 yards, or 4.1 yards per attempt.

"We couldn't seem to get the ball downfield," tailback Alvin Pearman said.

That changed when Virginia took possession at its own 10-yard line to open the final period. Schaub threw to Michael McGrew for 11 yards, Ryan Sawyer for 24 and Pearman for 33 before swinging the ball to fullback Jason Snelling for an 18-yard touchdown and a 20-13 lead.

Sawyer and Pearman each made tough catches, especially considering Pearman was playing with a small cast on his right hand.

"We didn't call many deep passes today. We tried to control the ball with short passes," said Billy McMullen, who led Virginia with six receptions for 79 yards. "But when we did take our shots, the receivers made big plays."

McMullen's 35-yard catch with just more than five minutes remaining was among the day's biggest. It set up a gutsy call by offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave on the next play. Schaub handed the ball to Pearman, who pitched it back to Schaub. McGrew, left wide open on the flea flicker, hauled in Schaub's pass for a 54-yard gain to the Duke 2. Pearman scored on the next play, making it 27-16.

"I know it caught me off-guard, so it had to catch the defense off-guard," said McGrew of the trick play.

There were other heroes for Virginia. Kurt Smith made both of his field-goal attempts from 32 and 30 yards. The defense also "did a real good job," Groh said, despite allowing 414 yards.

Duke quarterback Adam Smith threw for 256 yards and two touchdowns. Junior tailback Chris Douglas rushed for 126 yards and caught eight passes for 89 more. Still, the Blue Devils had to settle for three short field goals - all between 20 and 28 yards - and committed three turnovers. The Cavaliers finished with four sacks.

"Our defense obviously kept us in the game for a long time until we could get something going," Groh said.

With Duke trailing 20-16 with seven minutes left, reserve defensive lineman Justin Walker made a critical play by batting Smith's pass into the air. Smith caught it and was tackled for a 12-yard loss, and the Blue Devils punted three plays later.

"He got all those Hershey bars up in the air pretty high," Groh said of Walker, who is nicknamed "Snacks."

Khary Sharpe's 15-yard touchdown catch brought Duke within 27-22 with 2:52 remaining, but linebacker Bryan White knocked down the ensuing conversion pass. Virginia then ate all but 31 seconds off the clock, thanks in part to a defensive holding penalty. The Blue Devils couldn't get past midfield and Smith's final desperation pass was picked off by Newby at the UVa 20.

Duke is now two shy of its own ignominious ACC record of 21 straight conference losses set in 1995-98. The Cavaliers, in improbable fashion, own their longest winning streak since starting off 5-0 in 1998.

"We have a lot of room for improvement, but we're happy to be 4-2," Newby said. "No doubt about that."

Like so many things during this four-game winning streak, that gamble paid big dividends for the Cavaliers.

Pearman, playing with a cast on his broken right hand, came through with several critical plays in the fourth quarter of Virginia's 27-22 victory at Wallace Wade Stadium.

His 33-yard catch set up the go-ahead touchdown early in the period. Later, he managed to successfully shovel the ball to quarterback Matt Schaub on a flea flicker, which resulted in a 54-yard pass to Michael McGrew. On the next play, Pearman scored on a 2-yard run that proved to be a necessary insurance touchdown.

"I have a lot of confidence in Alvin Pearman," Groh said. "He's a gamer. He shows that time and time again."

Pearman didn't play last Saturday against Wake Forest after breaking a bone in his hand during practice two days earlier. After practicing all week and using a smaller cast, he started against the Blue Devils but did not play again in the first half after losing two yards on his initial carry.

Just like last week, freshman Wali Lundy saw most of the action at tailback. Marquis Weeks, who started the season opener, has fallen out of the rotation. Michael Johnson has not played since spraining an ankle against South Carolina a month ago.

Lundy was largely ineffective, however, gaining just 18 yards on 10 touches - five runs and five catches. So as the team walked back to the field, Groh talked to Pearman.

"He just grabbed me and asked me, 'Alvin, are you ready to go?' I said, 'Of course, coach, I'm always ready to go,'" Pearman said. "He asked me, 'Can you control the ball?' I said, "Coach, just give me a chance - that's all I'm asking for.'"

Pearman said he probably wasn't supposed to be on the field during passing plays. "It must have slipped the coaches' minds," he said, but his catch, coming on third-and-4 with the score tied at 13, was one of the game's most important plays.

He hauled in a short throw from Schaub with his left arm and slipped two tackles while racing to the Duke 18-yard line. Schaub threw to Jason Snelling for a touchdown on the next play.

Pearman's cast also made it difficult to pitch the ball to Schaub on the flea flicker, but he got the job done. "I had to chest-pass it back there instead of throw it back," he said.

Pearman then scored his team-high third rushing touchdown of the season and later helped the Cavaliers run out the clock. He gained just nine yards on 10 carries, but he never fumbled despite his inability to clutch the ball with both hands.

"I didn't want to make any excuses out there," said Pearman, who led the team in rushing and all-purpose yards as a freshman. "I told the coaches early this week I'd be ready to go. I wasn't going to make any excuses why I couldn't do this, couldn't do that. It worked out fine."

There's a never-say-die attitude developing in Camp Wahoo these days and it is beginning to change the way outsiders view Virginia's football team.

Trailing at the half doesn't seem to phase these guys. Lopsided statistics? The Cavaliers' defense laughs in the face of such matters. The only thing they or their coach are concerned about is the bottom line and that line is looking very nice for the surprising Hoos six games into the season with seven more to play.

Consider that Virginia has outscored their opponents in the second half of the last nine consecutive games and compiled a 6-3 record during that stretch. The three losses were to nationally ranked Virginia Tech, Colorado State and Florida State.

Also consider that in the last three games of this season, the opposing offense has run a combined 281 plays (93.6 per game), while piling up 1,404 yards (468 per game). Normally defenses that surrender such statistics are getting plundered and pillaged by their opponents.

Not the Hoos.

Virginia is 3-0 during that stretch and has won its last four straight games for the first time since 1998.

So, what is Groh doing to pull out such Houdini-like finishes? He kids around sometimes, referring to Ouija boards and mirror, mirror on the wall, but pulling out these wins require more than smoke and mirrors.

Groh will credit a lot of UVa's success to the grit of his players but some of it has to go to the coaching. No matter how far the Cavaliers are down, Groh has been willing to tear up the game plan and go to something else that works.

Somehow, they keep finding

ways to win and avoiding losses. Had it not been for a couple of snafus in the opener against Colorado State, the Cavaliers would be 5-1 and nationally ranked themselves heading into this Saturday's home game against Clemson.

Last week the Hoos staged their second-largest ACC comeback of all time to beat Wake Forest. Saturday, they decided that they were going to have to just throw the ball all over the lot to beat Duke.

The Blue Devils, trying to avoid a 19th straight conference loss, jammed the proverbial box with defenders to take away Virginia's running game and did a great job of it. Hats off to Duke defensive coordinator Ted Roof, who has given previous UVa offenses some headaches.

So, the Cavaliers just open up the passing game.

"Duke made [UVa quarterback Matt] Schaub beat them today and that's exactly what he did," said running back Alvin Pearman, who inflicted some damage on the Blue Devils despite playing with a cumbersome cast on his broken right hand.

The Devils chose their poison, which may have been a big mistake on their part. While Virginia's running game has been decent, it hasn't exactly dominated games of late.

On the other hand, Schaub has been one of the hottest quarterbacks in the country. While the pass rush upon his was ferocious, causing him to throw a few passes away, eat the ball a couple of times and to throw one interception, he kept spreading the ball around until he found some holes in Duke's air war.

"We knew this wasn't the same Duke team we played last year," said Pearman.

He is right. These Blue Devils are much tougher on defense and have enough talent on offense to put up some points.

Schaub's numbers, 27 of 45 for 315 yards and a touchdown, may not stack up to his recent passing statistics, but the longer he played Saturday, the more effective he became. For the second straight week, Groh elected to throw the ball over the top of the defense to see what might happen.

For the second straight week, a lot did happen.

He dinked the Cavs down the field in an effective two-minute drill just before the half to knot it at 13-all. But in the two, big, fourth-quarter drives, it was "Air Groh."

For the first three quarters, UVa was limited to 124 total yards offense. In the first drive of the fourth quarter, the Cavs mounted a 90-yard scoring march, highlighted by a 24-yard pass to emerging wide receiver Ryan Sawyer, a 33-yard strike to Pearman to the Duke 18, from where another emerging weapon, true freshman fullback Jason Snelling, hauled in an 18-yard TD catch to make it 20-13.

About seven minutes later, Schaub drilled a 35-yard pass to All-American wide receiver candidate Billy McMullen to the UVa 44, followed by a bit of a gamble. Offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave jabbed a pitchfork into the Devils by calling for a little razzle-dazzle, a flea flicker.

Pearman took the handoff, turned and pitched the ball back to Schaub, who saw the Duke secondary suckered by the apparent running play. Schaub released the long ball to a wide-open Michael McGrew for a 54-yard gain to the Duke 2. Pearman scored on the next play.

"Our players did a nice job because we needed it all today," said Groh. "Our defense obviously kept us in the game for a long time until we could get something going. After awhile it became pretty apparent that we were going to have to make plays, that we weren't going to get anything of the drive nature put together."

The coach credited to his team's competitive toughness. What about the old man? Nobody in the program hates losing as much as Groh.

He's a go-for-broke kind of guy, willing to take gambles and attack until the end.

"In these kind of games you can't just rock along," Groh said. "You need some playmakers. Some guys have to step forward and change the course of the game in your favor."

While a lot of guys did take that step against Duke, no one took a bigger stride than Schaub. The knock on him early in his career was that he had a blessed arm but couldn't win. Well, that has changed.

"Being a quarterback is about bringing your team home under tough circumstances," Groh said.

That's what Schaub has been doing. The 35-yard strike to McMullen was a classic, thread-the-needle pass between three defenders. You knew if Schaub delivered it, McMullen would snare it.

Who would have thought that nearly midway through this season that the Cavs would have four wins? Not bad for a team picked to finish eighth in the nine-team ACC.

Still, don't start looking up bowl dates quite yet. We will find out what these young Cavaliers are made of over the next two weeks when they host Clemson and North Carolina.

If they sweep up those two league opponents, you can throw a parade.

He is, of course, referring to University of Virginia freshman linebacker Darryl Blackstock, who might best be described on the football field as a rolling ball of butcher knives. The brash kid from Newport News arrived in Charlottesville with the aim to break legendary Chris Slade's school and ACC career sack record (40) and already has four in his first five games.

What Shuman misses is Blackstock's relentlessness. A kid, who proved all his critics wrong both on and off the field at FUMA, he has a special place in Shuman's heart.

"He's up there on my Wall of Fame," said Shuman, who has coached hundreds of football players at the military school. "Blackstock would be No. 1 or No. 2 on that wall."

What makes this guy so good?

You'll sometimes hear coaches talk about players who have great motors, constantly going at full speed. Well, that's Blackstock, who had more than 50 quarterback sacks in the two seasons prior to joining the Cavaliers.

Apparently, Blackstock was so impressive during August training camp that Virginia coach Al Groh was known to stop practice and say, "Can anybody block this guy?"

No wonder Groh assigned him No. 56, the number another native Virginian, Lawrence Taylor, made famous while redefining the way linebackers do their job. Groh, who coached both, cringes if anyone relates the two at this stage.

Groh is tired of people saying, "So-and-so is the next Lawrence Taylor." The coach insists you'll never hear those words come from his lips. He's convinced there hasn't been another LT.

Still, Blackstock is off to an eye-opening start for a true freshman, which up until a couple of months ago was strictly concerned with rushing the passer.

"This is really a demanding position that [Blackstock] is playing," said Groh of the outside linebacker spot. "To be a top-notch guy there, you have to have multiple skills. If a guy really likes football and he has diverse skills, it's a great position to play."

UVa's outside backers are required to battle against tight ends on run blocks, must blitz at times, must play zone coverage against the pass, also play man-to-man coverage, and have to come off the edge into the backfield to try to blow up running plays.

Blackstock loves it. If it were up to him, he would never come off the field, just like at FUMA.

"He was one of the few guys who looked at me and said, 'Coach, I've got to play both ways here, keep me on the field,'" said Shuman. "He said he would play tight end, linebacker, cover kickoffs, punts, all of it."

That's a real bite of responsibility for someone who Shuman wasn't convinced could become a real Fork Union kind of guy before the city kid reported for duty. Blackstock had a big hair-do and the reports Shuman got on him weren't exactly glowing.

"They said, you don't want this guy, he'll never fit in, he'll never make it here," said Shuman. "I had a little concern."

That is until one day when Blackstock stepped into Shuman's office and told the coach he would do whatever the coach wanted.

"He put on a uniform, was a 'Yes, sir, and No, sir' guy. The guy sucked it up and did everything he was supposed to do," said Shuman.

Blackstock's effort wasn't limited to the gridiron. He exceeded expectations in the classroom and in the military aspect, making lieutenant of his hall.

"What he did out here was amazing," said Shuman.

Groh isn't quick to praise freshmen but you can tell that Blackstock is a Groh guy. The coach's eyes light up when his young linebacker's name comes up.

The 6-foot-4, 220-pounder has brought some excitement back to Virginia's defense. With the Wake Forest game on the line last week, the Deacons attempting to convert a fourth down deep in Cavaliers' territory, guess who stepped up?

Blackstock broke through the blocking for the biggest sack of his early college career.

"Game winner," said Groh with a smile.

During a time out just before the play, former Virginia All-American safety Anthony Poindexter, now an assistant strength coach in the program, pulled Blackstock aside and delivered a challenge.

"He looked me dead in my eyes and said, 'Somebody needs to make a big play right now and I'm starting with you,'" said Blackstock.

The linebacker said from that moment on until the play was over it was so quiet it was surreal. Once he got by the initial block, he had to rely on instincts. He knew the blocker would try to cut him and probably grab his ankle. Coaches had taught him to be aware of that and to hop in order to avoid the grab. The key is staying on your feet.

"After all that, I saw the quarterback get set to throw," said Blackstock, who buried the Wake passer in his tracks.

"Then I heard the crowd," said Blackstock.

The first time he met Slade, on the sidelines of UVa's opener against Colorado State, the former All-Pro pass rusher came up to Blackstock and said, "So, you're going to break my record?"

Blackstock, perhaps a bit intimidated, had a simple, nervous but confident reply.

"Yeah," said the freshman.

"Well, you had better get started," Slade said with a smile.

Blackstock went out and made his first college sack.

Any more questions?

In a preseason media poll, the Cavaliers and Blue Devils were picked to bring up the rear in the conference standings. That still could end up being the case, but each team has proven that it won't be a pushover.

Virginia (3-2, 1-1 ACC) already has won two games as an underdog, including last week's 38-34 comeback victory at Wake Forest. Duke (2-3, 0-1) snapped a 23-game losing streak with an opening triumph over East Carolina, then routed Navy by 26 points last week.

"I think this is going to be one of our biggest challenges of the season," said UVa coach Al Groh, whose team faces the Blue Devils today in their homecoming game at Wallace Wade Stadium.

Part of the challenge involves injuries. The Cavaliers are depleted at linebacker, safety, offensive line and tailback.

Attitude also may be an issue. Having thrived as an underdog, Virginia must adjust to the role of heavy favorite. Then again, no team that gives up 495 yards in back-to-back games has any business being overconfident.

"We go into every game thinking every team can beat us," freshman tailback Wali Lundy said. "There's no reason to take anyone lightly."

The Blue Devils present problems with a strong running game led by 250-pound junior Alex Wade, who has rushed for at least 100 yards in four of Duke's five games. The defense, under new coordinator Ted Roof, is much improved from a year ago.

Duke's program has reduced its competitive disadvantage in several important ways. The Blue Devils constructed a $20 million support facility similar to UVa's McCue Center. They also won support from the administration to relax admissions standards for recruits - a standard policy at other ACC schools.

"I think everybody here is starting to understand what it's going to take to have a successful football program," Duke coach Carl Franks said. "Look at what happened at Virginia when George Welsh got there. They looked at their admissions policies and it made a huge difference in their program."

With just one senior on the roster, the Blue Devils believe they have a bright future.

"It's taken awhile, but I think we'll be able to play with anyone pretty soon," said linebacker Jamyon Small, the lone senior.

The young Cavaliers also figure to have better days ahead. But the present isn't too shabby. With a victory today, they will own their first four-game winning streak since 1998.

"The season's not even half over yet," said junior quarterback Matt Schaub, one of the nation's hottest passers. "We have to keep preparing and playing like we have the last three weeks and try to keep the team going."