HARRISONBURG — The crowd was jet-engine loud, but Tyler Gray said he was able to block it all out.

“It was the loudest environment I ever played in,” the James Madison kicker said.

Decibel levels increased as the game wore on and the 18,282 inside the FargoDome might have piqued when Gray trotted out with the score tied at 17. Gray split the uprights to give Madison a 20-17 lead it would never relinquish in its 27-17 win.

JMU coach Mike Houston said he never doubted Gray, despite the ups and downs he had throughout the season.

Gray entered Friday night’s FCS semifinal game at North Dakota State having made only 12-of-18 field goals all year, so a fourth-quarter 45-yard try with a national championship berth a stake was anything but a sure thing.

But Houston stuck with the sophomore and gave him the opportunity when Madison needed to regain momentum. North Dakota State had re-energized the thunderous Fargo faithful by scoring 17 straight points to tie the game.

“We had seen him improve throughout the year, so in that situation we had the cut-off line for his range and then the fringe area,” Houston said. “I felt like, in that situation, we didn’t have much to gain by pinning them on a punt versus kicking indoors with no wind. He probably had the leg to hit it, so we elected to go for the kick.”

Houston made the decision to send Gray out after North Dakota State defensive end Brad Ambrocious was called for an offsides penalty on a punt, moving a fourth-and-19 from the Bison 33 to a fourth-and-14 from the 28.

“I thought OK, we’ll punt here and then there’s the 5-yard penalty,” Gray said. “Then I thought, OK, he might give me a shot here.”

The first-year Madison coach said he thought his first-year starting kicker could handle the task.

Houston said he put Gray in difficult situations all year at practice.

“I have a strange relationship with kickers,” Houston said. “I’m not very nice to them sometimes, but I warned him of that back in the spring. He’s been called several things and he’s had hats thrown at him.

“My whole thing with the kicker is that he has to get to a point where nothing phases him. You have to treat the kicker like crap when they’re young. But then they get to a point where they’re so immune to anything outside of their box.”

Gray said he was ready for the task because he finally felt confident after working throughout the fall to get comfortable with his technique.

Gray, a Winchester native from Millbrook High School, said he spent extra time each day after practice with special teams coordinator John Bowers in order to correct any mechanical flaws. In a stretch from Sept. 17 to Nov. 12, Gray missed five of his 12 field-goal attempts.

“Coach Bowers actually found an error in what I was doing,” Gray said. “I wasn’t really focusing on Dan Schiele, our holder. I wasn’t focusing on his fingers. Before I was focusing on Brett Seigel, our long snapper.

“Not putting my eyes on Schiele’s fingers put me off. I didn’t know where the ball would be placed. It was a small fundamental error, but once I fixed that I’ve been feeling more and more confident. It’s helped me.”

He had made five of his last six tries since the adjustment.

On Friday, Siegel snapped the ball and Gray zoned-in on Schiele’s fingers before booting the ball through the uprights with his right foot to give JMU the momentum back with 11:46 remaining.

It was the longest field goal of his career.

The Madison defense followed with a stop, and on the consequent series, the Dukes’ offense scored a touchdown to take a 27-17 advantage.

“There was a lot of adrenalin going through my body when I made the kick,” Gray said. “I didn’t know what to think in that situation, but the first thing I saw was [offensive line] Coach [Jamal] Powell hop up and jump up with me and I almost fell back because the force he had was so strong. But, it was just an exciting feeling.”