It all comes down to this one game for the Penn State football team.

A win makes the Nittany Lions (5-5, 4-4 Big Ten) bowl eligible, but a loss ends their season, making it the second season in a row that Penn State hasn't been to a bowl game.

The Lions will travel to Virginia at noon tomorrow for a regular season finale with the 4-7 Cavaliers. This game was supposed to be played Sept. 13, a rare Thursday night game for Penn State, but because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it was postponed.

Freshman quarterback Zack Mills, who was tabbed the starter by coach Joe Paterno on Tuesday, said he's happy the game wasn't played earlier in the season.

With Penn State playing its worst football of the year in its first four games, it would have been a huge risk to face the Cavaliers early on.

"We weren't playing very good football in the beginning of the year," Mills said. "We're better off playing them now than we would earlier in the season."

The Lions are 5-1 in their last six games, a streak that started after a bye week following the 20-0 Michigan loss at Beaver Stadium.

The run began at Northwestern, a 38-35 come from behind victory, and its only stumbling block was at Illinois, when the Fighting Illini came back in the final minutes to win the game. But the four game losing streak beginning the season and the 5-1 record afterwards means very little to Penn State now.

The team has only one game in mind and that is the one game playoff with Virginia, a very winnable game. The Lions' postseason hopes all come to the game tomorrow against the Cavaliers, who have two ACC wins at home, a one-point upset of Georgia Tech and against the conference's worst team, Duke.

Even though Virginia has a losing record, Paterno said there are still major concerns for his Penn State squad in Charlottesville, Va.

Once again, the 74-year-old coach is right. It's Senior Day, the final game of the season for Virginia and the Cavaliers head coach, former New York Jets coach Al Groh, has had two weeks to prepare for Penn State.

All that, and the fact that Virginia isn't as bad as its record reflects, causes concern for Paterno.

"The background Al has is that there are a lot of things he can do and has done," Paterno said. "He doesn't do them every game, but you don't know which ones you are going to face. That is why the week off is really a bothersome thing to me right now."

Virginia last played on Nov. 17, a 31-17 loss to Virginia Tech, but the game Penn State is focusing on is the Cavaliers 39-38 win the week earlier against Georgia Tech.

Senior linebacker Shamar Finney said in that game Virginia showed him that its team has changed dramatically since September.

"Watching them in the second half of the Georgia Tech game, they looked very good," Finney said. "First part of the season they didn't look very confident."

But things have changed for Penn State too, a distinct change from a team that couldn't do anything right to a team that hasn't made many mistakes in its five wins this season. When Penn State was losing games to Wisconsin, Iowa and the others, it looked as if the team wasn't doing anything properly.

Now that the Lions have won five of their last six and have shown to themselves they can perform on the playing field, the confidence level at every position has been raised, and that can only mean good things for Penn State tomorrow at Virginia.

"Once we got our confidence, we were able to get on a roll," Mills said. "We're loose and relaxed because we know we can do it."