Bulldogs seek to end season on positive note
One college football team will leave Fort Worth, Texas, this afternoon with a muchneeded bowl victory and some momentum going into the offseason.
That’s on the line when the Mississippi State Bulldogs meet the Tulsa Golden Hurricane at the Armed Forces Bowl. Kickoff is set for 11 a.m. and will be televised by ESPN.
MSU hired Mike Leach as head coach nearly one year ago to keep the tradition of reaching bowl games alive and take the program to an even higher level.
Even though the Bulldogs often struggled in reaching a record of 3-7 this season, they were able to make a bowl for the 11th-straight year after the NCAA lifted win-loss restrictions for the postseason due to the circumstances surrounding the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Leach likes the direction MSU is going, but knows there is still work to be done.
“I think we’ve progressively improved,” Leach said “We’re still definitely a work in progress. We’re getting better as we speak, but I was proud of our guys for sticking in there and being committed to improving.”
No better example of that among the Bulldogs is true freshman quarterback Will Rogers.
Since taking over as starter for the Vanderbilt game, Rogers has steadily gotten better. He has completed 220-of-316 pass attempts for 1,828 yards and seven touchdowns.
“I think he’s done a really good job,” Leach said of Rogers. “He’s as far along as any true freshman that I’ve had.
It’s just knowing how to carry himself with the team in the huddle. I think he’s continued to grow in that regard.”
It helps Rogers to have a fellow freshman with the talent of Jaden Walley at wide receiver. Walley has emerged, especially in the second half of the season, to catch 48 passes for 691 yards and a pair of touchdowns.
MSU has had four different receivers catch 40 passes or more during the course of the season and that’s what makes its offense challenging to defend for Tulsa head coach Phillip Montgomery.
“They spread the ball around and always like coach Leach has,” Montgomery said. “You are going to have multiple receivers have a ton of catches. They are going to make you aware of what they do underneath. They are going to dink and dunk, keep moving chains with crossing routes and all of the things they do so well on offense and getting the back out and using him.
“All of a sudden, you think you have a good grasp of that, somebody slips by you. You’ve got to eliminate those big plays. You’ve got to do a good job on early downs and get them in long yardage situations.”
The Bulldogs have also been solid on the defensive side of the football all season long under defensive coordinator Zach Arnett.
Senior linebacker Erroll Thompson leads the unit with 86 total tackles, while sophomore linebacker Aaron Brule has eight tackles for loss and 2.5 sacks.
Montgomery said Arnett does a good job of throwing different looks to confuse an opponent.
“They are very multiple,”
Montgomery said. “They are basing out of an odd front, but they are just as much even as they do odd and use a ton of different coverages, twisting their movement, blitzing with different looks, and rolling different guys into the box.
“We’ve had to go against a lot of that
throughout the year, but they’ve got really talented guys doing it and they have a lot of pressure looks. We’ve just got to have our eyes in the right spots and find ways to move the football.”
The 22nd-ranked Golden Hurricane look to end the season on a positive note after losing a 27-24 decision to No. 6 Cincinnati in the American Athletic Conference Championship Game.
Montgomery cherishes the opportunity to be on this stage against a Southeastern
Conference opponent.
Even though the forecast has backed off the snow that was predicted earlier in the week, but the potential for storms still exists and the conditions may not be ideal for the Armed Forces Bowl today.
Montgomery is hoping for the best. “Looking for a great game and hopefully the weather will improve and we’ll get to play the game the way we want to play,” Montgomery said.