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Mississippi State bounces back vs. South Carolina, remains question in West
By Nick Andrews
Published:
Mississippi State appeared focused, motivated and angry enough to be effective against South Carolina en route to a 27-14 victory at home on Saturday night, but the win is no cause for celebration.
The win calms concerns after the team found itself on the wrong end of a Week 1 upset that garnered national attention.
The plan was to throw the first punch and finish strong.
“The mood coming out, we were just ready to unleash on them,” senior defensive end A.J. Jefferson said after the game, according to hailstate.com.
The Bulldogs did bounce back, but the game said more about the rebuilding of the Gamecocks than the resilience of the Bulldogs.
Jefferson and the MSU defense held South Carolina to 34 yards on the ground on 31 total carries. Mississippi State performed exceptionally well against the dual threat posed by Brandon McIlwain, who carried 11 times for a mere 17 yards.
However, the rush defense was not the problem in the upset loss, the pass defense was. After giving up 285 yards to South Alabama, mostly during the comeback effort, the Bulldogs again allowed a team to attempt a comeback effort through the air.
Once down 24-0 at halftime, South Carolina twice put together touchdown drives of more than 10 plays, gaining nearly all of their yardage through the air.
South Carolina, widely considered to be the worst team in the conference, couldn’t complete the comeback like it did in its Week 1 win over a Vanderbilt team many considered to be legitimately improved from last year.
The youth of South Carolina may have bailed the Bulldogs out whereas an experienced team, even one lacking in blue-chip talent like South Alabama, could finish off the comeback effort.
The ability to stop the run may prove advantageous in this year’s SEC West, though. Both Auburn and LSU don’t appear to be competent through the air unless you want to believe those teams found long-term answers in Sean White and Danny Etling against inferior competition last Saturday.
The Bulldogs will need to tighten up against Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Alabama, who boast impressive, even elite, passing attacks. Luckily for MSU, it will face those teams in three of the final four weeks and have plenty of time to prepare.
It would be advantageous to secure bowl eligibility before those games, though. In order to achieve that, the Bulldogs will need to avoid further upsets and win road games against UMass, BYU and Kentucky. Springing an upset of their own certainly wouldn’t hurt.
The perfect time of an upset could be this week when MSU visits a vulnerable LSU team. While all eyes in the SEC will be on Alabama and Ole Miss, Dan Mullen and company could catch LSU looking ahead to its trip to Auburn and steal a win against an LSU squad still searching for definitive answers offensively.
The key will be to stay as motivated this week as they were last week.
“It’s been pretty intense, I’ll tell you that much,” Mullen said about the week leading up to South Carolina, according to hailstate.com. “That’s who we are.”
