CHAPEL HILL – Another box checked.

Actually, a few more boxes checked.

And as Mack Brown continues to revamp a North Carolina program he’s already revitalized, the quest to check off myriad boxes on the path toward achieving his mission have been like watching a maestro conduct a near-perfect symphony from one movement to another.

Understand, the glitches that accompany the Tar Heels each week after they run out of the tunnel are actually a part of that process. Make a mistake and correct the mistake. Make it again, try to correct it again. They’ll get fixed in due time.

All of the good stuff is part of it, too.

Eventually, the Tar Heels (4-4 overall, 3-2 ACC) were going to get back the Victory Bell and end a losing streak to Duke, as they did 20-17 on Saturday at Kenan Stadium. They were bound to change the tide of a ridiculous and perplexing period of misery versus instate FBS opponents, and they did.

(Just to note: UNC entered the game having lost three straight to Duke, N.C. State and East Carolina while also losing earlier this season to Appalachian State and Wake Forest, thus the Tar Heels had losing streaks versus the other five instate FBS clubs they’d played.)

“You’ve got to win these things, that’s the big part of what (Brown) talked about, winning in state, and that’s what we did,” senior safety Myles Dorn said.

What we saw Saturday was the personification of resilience and redemption. More ingredients.

Take sophomore placekicker Noah Ruggles, for example. He missed two costly field goals in overtime last week and was banished to the bench in favor of true freshman Jonathan Kim. But Kim badly missed a field goal attempt in the first half against the Blue Devils, so Brown went back to Ruggles, whose two second-half kicks gave the Tar Heels the winning points.

He was resilient and also got some redemption.

Then there’s Chazz Surratt. There can’t be many stories any better than this one anywhere in college football, and its latest chapter concluded with Surratt grabbing a game-saving interception against a Devils team he threw a costly one to late in a loss in this same building two years ago. Redemption.

Add perseverance.

Last month, the Tar Heels lost a heartbreaker to then-top ranked Clemson, failing to convert a two-point conversion with just more than a minute remaining in a one-point loss. They responded by waxing Georgia Tech on the road a week later.

Last week, the Heels dropped a six-overtime decision at Virginia Tech in a game they could have won sans a dozen ill-fated mistakes along the way. But instead of letting that defeat get them twice, the Heels were ready to go, donning their Navy blue duds and fighting through another seesaw battle emerging with a huge victory.

Brown knows what’s going on.

“I think our guys are learning,” he said. “They are believing in each other.”

And the result is their coach is now the program’s all-time leader in wins with 73, the Heels are 4-4 – the program’s winningest stretch of football since Mitch Trubisky was eight starts into his junior season – and Carolina is once again in control of its own destiny in the ACC’s Coastal Division.

That’s a really, really big box, but it’s now clearly within reach.