GREENVILLE
C.J. Wilson blocked the kick, grabbed the ball and headed for the goal line. Nothing would stop him from securing a final home game at East Carolina.
The Pirates gained home-field advantage for the Conference USA title game by beating Southern Mississippi 25-20 yesterday, with the final momentum swing coming on Wilson's return of a blocked extra point for the tie-breaking two-point conversion.
Patrick Pinkney was 25 of 41 passing for 269 yards and Dwayne Harris and defensive tackle Linval Joseph had scoring runs for ECU (8-4, 7-1), which beat the Golden Eagles in Greenville for the first time since 1994. Now the defending league champions welcome the West winner -- either No. 25 Houston or SMU -- to Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium, with the winner going to the Liberty Bowl.
Damion Fletcher had 60 yards rushing for Southern Miss (7-5, 5-3), and his 3-yard touchdown pass to Leroy Banks tied it at 20 with 7:35 to play.
But Wilson burst up the middle to block Daniel Hrapmann's PAT, pushed Hrapmann out of the way to grab the ball near the 25-yard line and raced downfield with a convoy of blockers to make it 22-20.
"That unit has continued to let the football team down throughout the entire year," Southern Miss coach Larry Fedora said of a kick team that also allowed Houston to block a PAT and return it for two.
Ben Hartman made it 25-20 with his third field goal of the day, a 47-yarder with 4:37 left. Martevious Young couldn't muster any Eagles offense after that, and Steve Spence sacked him on the last play.
Tory Harrison rushed 41 yards for a touchdown, Young finished 20 of 44 for 262 yards with a score, and DeAndre Brown caught seven passes for 145 yards for Southern Miss.
The Eagles, trying to reach the C-USA title game for the first time since 2006, rallied from 10 points down before finally falling to 1-5 on the road this year and losing on ECU's home field for just the third time in 18 games. ECU's only two prior wins vs. Southern Miss in Conference USA play came in Hattiesburg.
"They have been our Achilles' heel. They have been our nemesis," said ECU coach Skip Holtz, who told Fedora before the game that "this is what it needed to come down to, the two best teams in the East playing for all the marbles here in the very last game of the year."
Harris had one of ECU's best individual efforts of the season. After bobbling an end-around handoff, he ran through a feeble tackling attempt and raced 34 yards down the left sideline to put ECU up 10-7.
Then, Pinkney completed five straight passes before his 12-yard scramble got ECU to the 5. Two plays later, Joseph -- a 322-pound defensive tackle who lined up at fullback -- plunged across the goal line to make it 17-7.
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