Arkansas coach Sam Pittman can’t recall every single moment from last year’s 21-14 win at Mississippi State.
But after the victory in Starkville broke the Razorbacks’ 20-game Southeastern Conference losing streak, Pittman has plenty of good memories from the trip.
“I remember the movie the night before was really a good movie, and I quit honking at people when I was behind them, I know that,” the Hogs’ second-year coach said Monday.
One season later, Pittman hopes another tangle with the Bulldogs will lead to another win and yet more favorable feelings in Fayetteville.
Arkansas (5-3, 1-3 SEC) is on a three-game conference losing streak as it hosts Mississippi State (5-3, 3-2) at 3 p.m. Saturday in a meaningful SEC West matchup at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium.
“I think playing them last year and having some success, that sort of will help us some,” Pittman said.
With a 31-17 home victory over No. 12 Kentucky, Mississippi State posted its second win of the season against a team currently ranked in the AP Top 25. North Carolina State, whom the Bulldogs beat as an unranked team 24-10 on Sept. 11, is now ranked in the coaches poll, too.
But Arkansas has quelled MSU’s hopes before. After the Bulldogs went into Baton Rouge and upended defending national champion LSU to open the 2020 season, the Razorbacks came to Davis Wade Stadium and stifled them. It was Arkansas’s first SEC win since Oct. 28, 2017, against Ole Miss.
“My memory was seeing the kids’ faces and the relief in the locker room for them,” Pittman said.
After wins over the Rebels and Tennessee, Pittman’s team came into 2021 with high expectations — which soared when the Hogs beat Texas and Texas A&M amid a 4-0 start.
Then the bottom fell out. Arkansas was blown out at top-ranked Georgia — no shame in that — before losing at Ole Miss and at home against Auburn. Only a romp over Arkansas–Pine Bluff separates the Razorbacks from a four-game skid.
So with eight regular-season contests down and four to go, Pittman knows how much closing the year strong would mean to his team.
“It’s big because of how we started the season,” he said. “It would be big any time, but you don’t want to go 4-0 and ranked eighth in the country and then let it all slide away from you.”
Hence, beating the Bulldogs is the first step toward finishing strong. Arkansas would clinch bowl eligibility with a victory, though Pittman knows it’s not easy to come by.
He watched how Mississippi State limited a strong Kentucky offense to just 216 total yards and 17 points, seven of which came on a first-quarter punt return.
“They’re big, but they have a lot of movement, a lot of blitzes,” Pittman said. “You’ve got to stay out of third-and-long against them. They move all the time and have the speed to do that with. I like their linebackers in Johnson and Watson and Tyrus Wheat. You’ve got to find out where he is all the time because he’s a really good player.”
Pittman described Arkansas as a run-first team, and the Hogs will have to move the football efficiently on the ground to find success Saturday. Mississippi State’s run defense is tied with Alabama for the fourth-fewest yards allowed per game, and opponents convert just 37 percent of their third-down tries against the Bulldogs (MSU’s offense, by comparison, is successful more than 48 percent of the time.)
To Pittman, that means successful plays on early downs are paramount.
“You have to win first down against this team, however you do it,” he said.
That becomes particularly important against an offense built to possess the ball. Pittman said he doesn’t plan to take his time on offense against a Bulldogs team ranked sixth in time of possession at more than 35 minutes per game, but he knows Mississippi State can grind down opposing teams.
Pittman described a third-and-2 play against Kentucky when MSU simply swung the ball out on a short pass to a running back and easily moved the chains — a key weapon in the playbook of a team that throws the ball 55.4 times per game.
“They’re very effective with it, and I think that every throw is a run,” Pittman said. “I don’t know his philosophy, but it looks to me like the short passing game is a rush to me.”
Pittman praised quarterback Will Rogers, who went 36 for 39 in the win over the Wildcats, and the protection around the sophomore signal-caller as well as Rogers’ backs and receivers. He talked up the ability of MSU’s wideouts to block on important screen plays, a sign of the Bulldogs’ aggression across the board.
“It’s a physical football team that plays really hard,” Pittman said.
But so is Arkansas. And the Razorbacks feel up to the challenge that awaits them.
“We want to finish the season as good as we possibly can, and I think we will,” Pittman said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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