Championship still in reach for Eagles

With a 44-34 Senior Day win over Tulsa Saturday night at M.M. Roberts Stadium, the Southern Miss Golden Eagles set up a showdown with Conference USA East rival East Carolina Saturday in Greenville, N.C. which will act as a play-in game for the conference championship game.

Marshall's win over SMU on Saturday all but locked up a berth in that game for Houston, who holds the tie-breaker over the Mustangs and will travel across town to play at Rice (2-9) next weekend.

Houston will host the championship game barring a slip-up at Rice, but if Houston and SMU should both lose next weekend, there is a scenario in which Southern Miss (7-4, 5-2) could host the game with a win over East Carolina.

Either way, a win at Greenville is the only way to reach the team's preseason goal of a conference championship.

The Golden Eagles haven't lost in Greenville since 1994, but face a different kind of monster in East Carolina (7-4, 6-1 in C-USA). The reigning conference champion Pirates are 24-14 over the past three seasons under head coach Skip Holtz.

"Skip's got a great team," Larry Fedora said. "We'll have to take our best game with us to East Carolina, and there is no doubt in my mind we'll have it."

The Eagles will likely need an offensive performance reminiscent of Saturday's to beat the Pirates, who have one of the league's best defenses.

Martevious Young saved his best performance of the season for Tulsa, throwing for 276 yards and four touchdowns without an interception.

"I knew we were going to put up a lot of points," Young said. "It's a bad feeling watching them respond like that, but we wanted to let our defense know that we were going to take care of business."

Young wasn't the only Eagle that took care of business; USM wide receiver DeAndre Brown returned to his 2008 form, catching three passes for 135 yards and a pair of touchdowns.

"A lot of people have said that I didn't have the same speed I had before the injury," Brown said. "I think I showed them tonight I still got it."

The Southern Miss defense had another tough night, allowing 589 yards on 92 plays to the Golden Hurricane (4-7, 2-5 in C-USA).

The defense allowed 28 points in the first half, but played opportunistically in the second half, allowing just one touchdown and turning Tulsa away three times in the red zone.

"We just had to get used to their rhythm," Southern Miss linebacker Martez Smith said. "They really had us out of sync in the first half, but we calmed down at halftime, got it together and caught up with their up-tempo attack."

The Eagles also continued to struggle against dual-threat quarterbacks, allowing Tulsa's G.J. Kinne to rack up 484 yards of offense on his own.

Kinne hurt USM more than any dual-threat quarterback has this season, but he, UAB quarterback Joe Webb and Virginia's Jameel Sewell have combined for 980 yards of total offense against the Golden Eagles.

They'll try to buck that trend against ECU quarterback Patrick Pinkney, who has thrown for over 1,900 yards this season, and has led a resurgence of the Pirate offense in the second half of the season.

The Eagles will have a full head of steam going into Saturday coming off wins over Marshall and Tulsa.

"We've put ourselves in a position to achieve our ultimate goal we set to start the season," Smith said. "We want to win a conference championship."