By Elijah Klepczyk
Emmerich Newspapers
When it rains it pours for the Mississippi State football team, as the Bulldogs dropped their second straight game, this one a 31-0 setback to LSU in Baton Rouge over the weekend.
Notably, budding MSU star Kamario Taylor did not play in this matchup, and true freshman Parker Puckett made his first career start in Death Valley for the Bulldogs.
The Bulldogs offense struggled to get anything going on Saturday, only totaling 121 yards passing – a key component to the State engine.
Head coach Jeff Lebby did not give an update on Kamario, noting “he will not wake up tomorrow morning and be 100 percent … we are going to have to manage it.”
The run game did however find some more life than they had against Alabama, even with Fluff Bothwell being out – totaling 170 yards on the day.
State's record now stands at 4-2 (2-2), and will have an uphill battle to try and reach Atlanta for the SEC title game this season.
The Bulldogs are set to return home this Saturday to square off against another team that has struggled to generate offense – the Oklahoma Sooners.
The Sooners rank dead last in the SEC in total offense, but on the flip side rank second in the conference in defensive efficiency, only giving up an average of 260 yards per-game.
The stout OU defense is led by senior linebacker Owen Heinecke – who has 44 tackles for the Sooners this year. Heinecke is joined by standout senior cornerback Peyton Bowen who has one interception and five pass breakups on the season.
This game brings more intrigue with Lebby being the former offensive coordinator at Oklahoma before taking the head coach position with Mississippi State. The game will mark the first time Lebby has squared off against his former team, and the first time the two schools have played each other in their histories.
Kickoff is set for 2:30 p.m. in Davis Wade, and will be televised on SEC Network.
There were very few promising moments for Mississippi State against LSU on Saturday, as the Bulldogs struggled to seize any momentum on both sides of the ball.
State did seem to have a spark of life trailing 14-0 in the second quarter when Jett Jefferson forced a fumble and then recovered the fumble.Unfortunately the offense could not capitalize off of the turnover, and the Tigers forced a turnover on downs and found the endzone again to take a 21-0 lead.
It was more of the same for State in the second half, turning the ball over on downs on three of its four second half possessions.
The Bulldogs had many opportunities for field goals at the end of the game to avoid the shut-out, but Lebby said “we needed to score touchdowns to win the game,” and that was his mentality from start to finish. State had not been shut-out since 2020 and this was only the second time the Bulldogs had been held to a single-digit score under Lebby.
“They (the team) are frustrated right now, I am frustrated right now,” Lebby said in the post-game press conference, “we have to reset and we have to recover,” he added.
Lebby did offer a glimmer of hope, noting that “all of the goals” the team had set for the year are “still in front of them,” and that with a fully healthy team the Bulldogs can still be a solid unit.
