FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — With his hands resting on either knee pad and his eyes peering toward the line of scrimmage, Kylin Hill exploded out of his break.

Taking a handoff toward the right side of the Mississippi State line from graduate transfer quarterback Tommy Stevens — who started in wake of freshman Garrett Shrader’s illness — Hill bumped off right guard LaQuinston Sharp and hit the open field.

Racing down the sideline, Arkansas defensive back Kamren Curl finally whipped the Columbus native out of bounds at the Razorback 4-yard line for a 62-yard gain. Rinse and repeat.

“Great push by my offensive line,” Hill said. “I saw the hole and hit it.”

Following four weeks of losses, dismal starts and what seemed like an overwhelmingly defeated locker room, Joe Moorhead’s much maligned offense spoke louder than any of the collective “Pig Sooie” chants that enveloped a sparsely-filled Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium in Saturday’s 54-24 throttling of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Throughout his tenure at MSU, Moorhead has long preached his offense goes as the run game goes. It was at full throttle Saturday.

In losses to Auburn, Tennessee and LSU, Hill totaled 92 combined yards. Saturday, he exploded for 193 yards and three touchdowns in the first half alone — part of his 234-yard, 21-carry performance, an effort that left him just 24 yards short of Nick Fitzgerald’s MSU single-game rushing record.

“I just had to go over the film of previous games where I didn’t do well,” Hill said. “I had to learn when to be aggressive and when to be finesse. Once I get one-on-one I can be finesse, but when I’m with a crowd of guys I’ve got to hit the hole and get what I can.”

As Hill raced up, over and around the Arkansas defense, senior running back Nick Gibson also scampered for 129 yards on 12 carries — capped off by a 47-yard touchdown run with 8:22 remaining in the fourth quarter, while Stevens added another 74 yards of his own on 15 carries.

In all, the Bulldogs rushed for 460 yards — a program record against an SEC foe — while Stevens added another 172 yards on 12 of 18 passing — giving MSU its highest offensive output since notching 52 points against, ironically, Arkansas Nov. 17, 2018.

“I’ve said a bunch of times the success of our offense is predicated on our ability to run the ball successfully,” Moorhead said.

“I thought the guys did a great job getting moving at the line of scrimmage,” he continued. “I thought the running backs did a great job of running behind their pads, and I thought Tommy did a great job of getting the ball to who it needed to go to.”

As encouraging as MSU’s rushing numbers were, it was the offense’s efficiency and timeliness that was perhaps more impressive.

After slogging through a four-game losing streak in which the Bulldogs averaged 19 points per game, Moorhead’s bunch scored on eight of its 13 drives Saturday — five of which concluded in 3:10 or less.

With Hill and Gibson offensively outpacing the entire Arkansas team (363 rushing yards to 285 total yards), the MSU defense added its own score in the first-half explosion.

Leaping in front of an errant Ben Hicks throw, sophomore safety and former West Point quarterback Marcus Murphy jumped the route and scampered 32 yards for MSU’s second interception return for a touchdown this season.

“We knew they were running the switch route,” Murphy said. “So the whole way I was just waiting on him to sit down and the quarterback to throw the ball, and it was on from then.”

Murphy, who has been in and out of the lineup due to suspension, was among three starters (junior linebacker Willie Gay Jr. and junior cornerback Cam Dantzler also returned) who returned to an MSU defense that was a shell of its former self last week against Texas A&M.

With a full complement of players sans senior defensive lineman Lee Autry — who was suspended for a violation of team rules — defensive coordinator Bob Shoop’s unit held the Razorbacks to a meager 101 yards passing and 184 yards on the ground.

Now sitting at 4-5 and 2-4 in the SEC, MSU is two wins shy of the six victories needed for bowl eligibility. And while a throttling of an Arkansas team that is 0-14 against SEC foes during Chad Morris’ tenure, the win offers a semblance of hope for a team that just a week ago wandered off the field in College Station beleaguered, despondent and downright defeated.

“As coaches we’re always going to kind of linger worrying more about the things we need to correct than the things we did well,” Moorhead conceded. “But I do think that was as close to a 60-minute complete game as we played this season.”

Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.