No. 20 East Carolina Is Prepared to Win, 24-23 : Nonconference: Two-point conversion play, the focus of practice, works to perfection against No. 23 Pittsburgh.

Practice made perfect for Jeff Blake and East Carolina on Saturday.

After working much of the week on a two-point conversion play, Blake ran it as it was diagrammed after scoring on a two-yard run with 46 seconds to play, lifting the 20th-ranked Pirates to a 24-23 victory over No. 23 Pittsburgh.

“Earlier in the week, (offensive coordinator Steve Logan) said it was going to come down to a two-point play,” Blake said. “He put the play in, and we just practiced it and practiced it the whole week.

“When the time came, everybody was prepared.”

Playing before a record home crowd of about 36,000, East Carolina (6-1) took possession with 3:22 to play, trailing, 23-16, after Scott Kaplan kicked a 35-yard field goal for the Panthers. Blake passed 22 yards to Hunter Gallimore on third and 17. On a third-and-four pass play that lost a yard, Pittsburgh was penalized 15 yards.

Blake, the nation’s second-ranked passer, completed a 30-yarder to Dion Johnson to the Pittsburgh 15 and Gallimore caught a 14-yard pass to the one.

After tailback Cedric Van Buren was thrown back to the two, Blake ran left on an option play, kept the ball and stretched his left arm into the end zone. The Pirates then made the two-point conversion.

“If they gave us a certain defense, we were going to throw the ball,” Blake said. “If they gave us another certain defense, we were going to run the option.”

Pittsburgh used four down linemen and six defenders in the backfield, and Blake exploited it, running right and diving untouched into the end zone.

“He’s a gamer,” Logan said. “The bigger the stakes, the better he likes it. He likes the heat, and if you’re going to be a quarterback, you’d better like the heat because if we lost the game, everybody would be saying, ‘What’s wrong with Jeff Blake?’ ”

Blake completed 21 of 31 passes for 247 yards. But his streak of 158 passes without an interception ended.

After the Pirates took the lead, Alex Van Pelt moved the Panthers (5-3) from their 20 to the East Carolina 30--all without a timeout, because the Panthers had none.

With first and 10 at the 30, Pittsburgh tried to run a play with seven seconds remaining instead of trying for a field goal. Van Pelt completed a 19-yard pass to Chad Askew to the 11, but time expired.

“The strategy on the last set of plays was to get close enough for a field goal,” Pittsburgh Coach Paul Hackett said. “We wanted five more yards.