STARKVILLE — The first four drives of Saturday’s game were familiar for all the wrong reasons.
The Mississippi State football offense went three-and-out on its first two possessions. The defense allowed a UMass touchdown and field goal. The Bulldogs trailed 10-0 in the first quarter and looked to be on the way to an embarrassing eighth straight loss.
But quickly, everything changed. Mississippi State (2-7, 0-5 SEC) scored 35 straight points on its way to a 45-20 victory, with the game all but wrapped up in the third quarter.
The Bulldogs have been saying they believed in first-year coach Jeff Lebby even during their seven-game losing streak. It finally showed on the field against UMass (2-7).
“Coach Lebby is a great leader and he’s telling us, he’s teaching us and he’s leading us to keep fighting, keep playing,” linebacker Stone Blanton said. “It’s not going our way, good. We just got to keep battling it out and keep doing it. There is a reason that this is happening. There is a lesson out of anything, no matter how bad it is.”
Mississippi State is closer to UMass than the top of the SEC right now in the college football hierarchy. It’s a harsh reality, but OK for a program clearly in a rebuild.
It wouldn’t have been surprising to see other teams quit on the season if put in the same situation as MSU. The Bulldogs lost at home 58-25 last week to Arkansas, which was blown out by Ole Miss this week, then fell behind 10-0 to UMass. Boos were audible from the homecoming crowd of 48,617, the second-lowest attendance of the season.
Mississippi State hadn’t held a lead past the first quarter since Week 1, so an early deficit wasn’t new. The response this time was different. It did more than just swing back. It connected on a punch and delivered more knockout blows. That hadn’t been happening before.
“Certainly proud of how we came back,” Lebby said. “Obviously the way we started was not what we wanted at all on both sides of the football. I was incredibly proud of our guys just continuing to play the next play and finding a way to create some momentum and being able to keep momentum.”
Lebby said on Monday that the Bulldogs’ in-game adjustments were partially to blame in the losing streak. They’d have meetings on the sideline to make corrections, but they weren’t translating well enough on to the field.
Against UMass, they did.
Of the Bulldogs’ 463 total yards, 453 came in the final three quarters. All 45 of MSU’s points came in the final three quarters, too. The Minutemen sacked quarterback Michael Van Buren Jr. three times, but all were in the first half.
Defensively, UMass didn’t score in either of the second or third quarters. The Minutemen’s third-string quarterback threw a touchdown with 17 seconds remaining in the game.
“That’s probably what I’m most proud of is guys finding a way to not be too down on themselves, us finding ways to coach with confidence in the moment when things aren’t well and our guys answering the bell and being able to go get off the field,” Lebby said.
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The hidden beauty of Mississippi State being mostly eliminated from bowl contention — it’d have to win out and be chosen to a bowl based on Academic Progress Rate — is it can make mistakes without massive consequences. There certainly have been plenty of mistakes this season.
Lebby said he’s still learning. Lessons from this season could prove beneficial.
“I’m a lot more comfortable today than I was Day 1, just from the standpoint of being able to go call it on the field and having great confidence in what I’m seeing,” he said.
Beating lowly UMass probably won’t turn the season around, but at least it can instill some lost confidence in the program.
Sam Sklar is the Mississippi State beat reporter for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at ssklar@gannett.com and follow him on X @sklarsam_.
