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JACKSONVILLE, Ala. (AP) Garrison Rippa kicked a 28-yard field goal as time expired to send Jacksonville State<\/a> to the Conference USA championship game with a 37-34 win over Western Kentucky<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n The Gamecocks (8-4, 7-1) will host Kennesaw State in the championship game on Friday.<\/p>\n Caden Creel led the Gamecocks from the JSU 39 to the WKU 11 over the final 4:18 to set up the winning kick.<\/p>\n Creel completed 12 of 19 passes for 209 yards and two touchdowns and had 143 rushing yards including a score. Cam Cook added 137 yards rushing and a TD. Cook entered the game with the second-most rushing yards in the FBS with 1,444.<\/p>\n Cook scored the first touchdown for Jacksonville, a 14-yard rush in the first quarter. Western Kentucky (8-4, 6-2) responded with three straight scores to go up 21-7 early in the second quarter. A kick from Rippa and a 2-yard reception by Pearson Baldwin made it 21-17. Both teams scored another touchdown before halftime.<\/p>\n Creel rushed for a 70-yard score in the third quarter to take the lead for the Gamecocks.<\/p>\n Rodney Tisdale Jr. completed 17 of 24 passes for 180 yards for Western Kentucky. La’Vell Wright ran for 116 yards and scored two touchdowns.<\/p>\n — Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP News mobile app). AP college football: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-football<\/p>\n \n Copyright 2025 STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Ala. (AP) Garrison Rippa kicked a 28-yard field goal as time expired to send Jacksonville State to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[143,116,118,117,4642,23626],"class_list":{"0":"post-64890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-jacksonville","10":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","11":"tag-jacksonville-news","12":"tag-jacksonville-state-gamecocks","13":"tag-western-kentucky-hilltoppers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}