HARRISONBURG — The last of the four had what the first three didn’t — James Madison hurdling a series of difficulties to win running away.

“I think the good thing is we haven’t peaked yet,” Dukes senior quarterback Ben DiNucci said. “And that’s kind of what you want. You want to improve every week so that when December hits, we’re hitting this thing full speed.”

In Saturday’s victory at Chattanooga, JMU was the better of the two sides for all but the final five minutes of the opening quarter.

A roughing-the-passer penalty called on the Dukes extended an eventual scoring series that featured three third-down conversions for the Mocs. Exactly 22 seconds later, they got in the end zone again to even the at score 14 while capitalizing on the Madison fumble during the ensuing kickoff.

“Before you know it, it’s a tie game,” JMU coach Curt Cignetti said. “So to me, the great thing was we had some adversity there on the road. It’s a great teachable moment and I thought we played very poised.”

Safety D’Angelo Amos’ third-quarter interception sealed the win and JMU outscored Chattanooga 23-0 from the second quarter on. With the victory, the program carries a three-game winning streak into the Colonial Athletic Association schedule, which starts Saturday when the Dukes travel to Elon for a 2 p.m. conference contest with the Phoenix.

“I just feel like this game was much needed especially going into conference play,” Amos said, “because every team we play is good. You don’t know who may come out and play their best ball that week, and we get everybody’s best shot. So I feel like it was great to experience that right before conference [play], and not in conference.”

JMU combined to tally 107 total points and only gave up 19 in blowout wins over St. Francis and Morgan State the past two weeks, but the Week 1 loss suffered at West Virginia had its own moments of trouble that cost the Dukes their chance of knocking off an FBS opponent — Amos muffed a punt, DiNucci threw an interception and running back Percy Agyei-Obese fumbled.

But Amos has corralled every punt in each of the last two games and thrived at safety on defense, Agyei-Obese became the first running back to carry for more than 100 yards in a game this season when he did it against Chattanooga and DiNucci is the clear catalyst for the offense.

DiNucci ranks third nationally for completion percentage (74 percent), has thrown seven touchdowns to six different receivers, hasn’t turned the ball over since the loss to West Virginia and repeatedly keeps series alive with his takeoff-and-run decisions. Through four games, he’s picked up 10 first downs on the ground.

And as the offense has consistently moved the ball, the Dukes’ defense ranks third nationally for rushing defense (69 rushing yards allowed per game), seventh in FCS for scoring defense (13.3 points allows per game) and seventh for third-down conversion percentage defense (24 percent).

“You know, we’re headed in the right direction,” Cignetti said. “We have stretches where we play well and are very physical on both sides of the ball. It all starts up front and we’ve done a much better job of protecting the football offensively the last three games, so we’ve been pretty balanced with the run and the pass. Our pass game has been very efficient. We’re playing really well up front on defense in stopping the run. We’re getting good effort on special teams, but we’ve got areas to clean up and improve and we got to keep improving as we enter our first conference game.”

Agyei-Obese said JMU is confident after finishing its non-conference slate with a hard-fought win away from Bridgeforth Stadium.

“It’s definitely big because it boosts our morale,” Agyei-Obese said, “and it shows we can win on the road, and that we can do big things on the road. We still made mistakes today that we have to clean up, but our goal every week is to do better than we did the week before.”