TEMPE, Ariz. — Against all odds, Mississippi State was back in Saturday night’s game in the closing minutes, having trimmed what was once a 27-point second-half deficit to just seven with five and a half minutes to go.
But the Bulldogs’ first step toward completing the improbable comeback was to stop Arizona State’s relentless rushing attack, led by Cam Skattebo. And after forcing punts on three straight possessions, MSU was unable to get its defense off the field again. Skattebo rushed for 262 yards on 33 carries as the Sun Devils held off the Bulldogs, 30-23.
“We’re going to watch the tape and be frustrated,” MSU head coach Jeff Lebby said. “We weren’t able to get (Skattebo) on the ground. We weren’t able to get off the field in some certain situations where we had opportunities to. And at the end of the day, that leads to them being able to chew up the clock. They had incredible game control.”
Arizona State had the ball for more than 40 minutes, running 77 offensive plays to the Bulldogs’ 55. The Sun Devils dominated the first half, scoring every time they had the ball, and MSU (1-1) had no answers for Arizona State’s ground game. After a three-and-out on the Bulldogs’ opening drive, the Sun Devils (2-0) moved the ball swiftly down the field, marching 79 yards in 10 plays and opening the scoring on a 17-yard touchdown run from quarterback Sam Leavitt.
That possession set the tone for the rest of the half, which saw the hosts average 7.4 yards per carry. Skattebo crossed the 100-yard mark with four minutes to go before halftime, and Leavitt proved difficult to contain as well, scoring his second touchdown of the night on a quarterback sneak in the final minute of the half to make it 27-3.
“They really just out-leveraged us on a bunch of plays,” said safety Isaac Smith, who led all players with 17 tackles, seven of them solo. “We had a bunch of missed tackles. We have to fly around to the ball more, get more hats on the ball and just get the ball carrier down on initial contact.”
Things weren’t much better for MSU’s offense, which went three and out on its first two drives. Quarterback Blake Shapen began to find his rhythm on the Bulldogs’ third series, which started with a 27-yard completion to Jordan Mosley that moved the visitors into Arizona State territory for the first time. MSU made it to the doorstep of the goal line before running back Keyvone Lee dropped a pass in the corner of the end zone, forcing the Bulldogs to settle for a field goal.
MSU got the ball back down 13-3 and appeared to generate an explosive play when Shapen hit freshman Mario Craver deep down the right sideline for 61 yards. But Craver had pushed off a defensive back while the ball was in the air and was called for pass interference, setting up a third-and-22 on the Bulldogs’ own 13. Shapen tried to get rid of the ball before being sacked, but it slipped out of his hand, and C.J. Fite recovered it for an easy Sun Devils touchdown.
“That was a frustrating moment,” Lebby said. “We had the ability to create a huge chunk there, and then Blake’s trying to throw it away to not take a sack and the ball just slips out of the back of his hand and the guy picks it up and scoops and scores.”
Arizona State, already leading by 24, got the ball to start the second half and took up more than eight minutes on its first drive of the third quarter, using a heavy dose of Skattebo to get into field goal range and extend its lead to 30-3. But MSU showed some mettle down the stretch, responding with a 12-play, 75-yard drive that ended on a 6-yard run by Lee, his first touchdown as a Bulldog.
After that, the defense made its first stop of the night, a three-and-out capped by a Branden Jennings sack on third down. Gifted with a short field thanks to a kick catch interference penalty, MSU followed that up with another touchdown, this one on a 15-yard pass from Shapen to Davon Booth.
“The message was (to) execute,” Shapen said. “Whenever you’re down that many touchdowns, you just have to take it one play at a time and continue to move the football, and obviously convert on third downs. We struggled with that very early in the game, and for us to convert was a big deal. We were hurting ourselves too many times tonight.”
The Bulldogs hurt themselves again upon getting the ball back. They managed to overcome a holding penalty to pick up one first down, but Shapen was sacked on back-to-back plays to kill the possession.
MSU was not finished, though. The defense stepped up to force another punt just shy of midfield, and Shapen then found Kevin Coleman on a quick button-hook pattern, and Coleman made one defender miss and was off to the races for an 80-yard touchdown. Shapen finished 18-of-28 passing for 268 yards and two scores.
But that play was the last time the offense saw the ball. Skattebo picked up five yards on a key fourth-and-1 to keep the clock running, then iced the game with chunk plays on either side of the two-minute timeout. Arizona State’s 346 rushing yards were the most the Bulldogs have allowed in a game since they gave up 357 against Arkansas in 2016.
“I did a bad job of getting us ready to play,” Lebby said. “We had great emotion, we had great energy, but we didn’t execute. It is a game of execution. This game will punish you when you don’t play with detail and you don’t execute, and I have to coach them better to get them to do that early on.”
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