STARKVILLE — For the first time this season, Mississippi State defensive tackle tandem Fletcher Cox and Josh Boyd dominated the line of scrimmage.
Cox and Boyd, who had been nominated as Southeastern Conference second-team selections, combined for 13 tackles, two and a half sacks, and four and a half tackles for loss Saturday in a 14-12 loss to the No. 15 University of South Carolina.
The play of Cox and Boyd helped MSU (3-4, 0-4 SEC) hold South Carolina to 2.6 yards per carry.
“We can be real good like we were today,” Cox said about the team’s play in the final five regular-season games. “The main thing we always talk about is stopping the run game.”
MSU forced South Carolina to punt six times and on its first four possessions of the game.
“You hold a back like (tailback) Marcus Lattimore to 39 yards rushing and that’s a pretty good day,” MSU coach Dan Mullen said. “With the talent that team has, I think our guys overall did really well throughout the course of the game.”
South Carolina’s interior line, which includes three upperclassmen, was pushed backward constantly, making the first road start for quarterback Connor Shaw difficult. The Gamecocks allowed three sacks, two interceptions, and had nine plays stopped short of the line of the scrimmage.
“I didn’t handle the pressure as well as I should have,” Shaw said.
MSU junior linebacker Brandon Wilson, who had eight tackles, said a major difference in preparation was Cox and Boyd watching film with the linebackers as a group before they took the field Saturday.
“They’ve put in their mind they can go out and dominate,” Wilson said. “Linebackers go in and watch film with us and that time usually is represented on the field.”
Mullen opens bag of tricks
In the third quarter, MSU quarterback Tyler Russell was sandwiched between a pair of defensive ends.
While his starting quarterback was standing next to him regaining his bearings, Mullen decided it was time to run another trick play.
The first-and-10 call from the South Carolina 31-yard line started with junior wide receiver Chad Bumphis in the wildcat formation but resulted in a pitch to redshirt freshman quarterback Dylan Favre, who was split out wide before the snap.
“We got the ball across midfield and tried a trick play,” Mullen said. “They hit theirs and we missed ours. We wanted to take a shot right.”
Favre fumbled the pitch and slung the ball downfield toward to Bumphis. The pass was ruled an interception on the field but was overturned by SEC replay officials before the Gamecocks could run a play.
The drive ended in Derek DePasquale’s first missed field goal attempt,
a 40-yarder.
“That’s the package we had worked on to have Favre in the game to do,” Mullen said when asked if the hit to Russell had to do with the play call.
Lattimore injures knee
South Carolina leading rusher Marcus Lattimore left the game with an injury to his left knee late in the fourth quarter and didn’t return.
Lattimore, who only had 39 yards on 17 carries, was surrounded by teammates on the bench after he was helped off the field.
The sophomore injured his knee on the game-winning drive trying to block on a wildcat run that was snapped to Bruce Ellington.
South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier said he was told the injury was a knee sprain but Lattimore, the 2010 SEC Offensive Freshman of the Year selection, was forced to use crutches to get to the locker room.
“We could be without Marcus for a while, but we’ll have to wait and see about that,” Spurrier said after the game.
MSU held the All-America tailback to his third lowest total in a regular-season game.
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