It has been an interesting four-game stretch for the Mississippi State Bulldogs, who began the 2011 season with high aspirations of making it to Atlanta for the conference championship game.
From coming inches short against Auburn on Sept. 10 to squeaking by Louisana Tech in overtime at home and SEC losses to Georgia and LSU, the beginning of the 2011 season has not played out the way many people around the MSU program anticipated it would.  
After averaging almost 590 yards of offense the first two games of the season, MSU has only surpassed 300 yards once in its past three outings and only managed 213 yards in the loss to  Georgia. Throughout large portions of the first five games this season, State has struggled to remain consistent on the offensive side of the ball, often having to resort to back-ups to fill in for injured starters or in attempt to find a spark.
One of the problems that has hindered State’s offense, head coach Dan Mullen said, is having too many negative plays each game.
“Offensively, what takes you out of flow are negatives. We had nine negative yardage plays on offense (against Georgia), we had five penalties on offense and three turnovers,” Mullen said. “Some of those are the things that really set us back in the course of the game.”
The Bulldogs will look to find consistency and flow as they shift their focus to the University of Alabama at Birmingham Blazers, an opponent many think will give MSU an excellent opportunity to find its identity and to work out the kinks on offense.
Even though UAB has yet to win a game in 2011, Mullen said the Dogs must be careful not to overlook a “very good” opponent in the Blazers.
“We’ve got a lot of things we’ll get cleaned up,” Mullen said. “Obviously, UAB is a tough opponent, and we saw that here in our stadium last year. They took us right down to the wire, so we know we’ll have our hands full with these guys.”  
The game Mullen was referring to was State’s eighth game last season, when the outcome of the contest came down to the MSU defense preventing a last-minute touchdown by the UAB offense to seal a 29-24 home victory.
Throughout Monday’s press conference, several coaches and players were quick to give praise to this year’s UAB squad, specifically the offense, and first-year co-defensive coordinator Geoff Collins said their current 0-4 record is in no way reflective of how good they truly are.
“When I was at (Central Florida), I was there two years, and the two roughest games I had at UCF were against UAB, so I’m well aware of the problems that offense can present,” Collins said.
Collins said UAB does everything well. He specifically mentioned the Blazers are well-coached and play with great fundamentals.
The Blazers enter Saturday’s game against MSU winless in the 2011 season, although they have only lost their last two games by a combined six points.
Their lack of success is only furthered on paper, where the Blazers rank worse than 100th in almost every major statistical category, including scoring offense, in which they average only 14 points a game, and scoring defense, in which they allow a whopping 35 points a game.
Through five games, the Bulldogs are also lacking a lot of luster on paper, where they rank 75th in scoring offense and 51st in scoring defense.
One category MSU players, coaches and fans are expecting major improvement on in the near future is rushing defense, where the Bulldogs are ranked 73rd nationally, giving up 161.8 yards a game, which is an average of nearly 50 more yards than MSU’s defense allowed on the ground last season.
The Bulldogs got a taste of defensive success in the second half of last week’s game in Athens, where they held Georgia to just 103 yards in the final two quarters of play, something defensive coordinator Chris Wilson credits to adjustments his players were able to make.
“We had a second half plan that we thought fit,” Wilson said. “Our kids adjusted to it well, and the attitudes were great.”
The Blazers come into the game averaging just over 290 yards a game offensively, and have a tendency of distributing the ball to different weapons, as 12 offensive players have two or more receptions this season.
Among UAB’s offensive weapons is running back Pat Shed, who is considered a threat running the ball, catching balls out of the backfield and making big plays on special teams. Shed, a Starkville native, was on the preseason Doak Walker Award watch list, an award presented to the top running back in the nation. He has compiled over 200 yards of total offense this season and tallied 227 all-purpose yards against MSU in last season’s matchup. 
The goal this week, Wilson stated, is to put a complete game together.
“Special teams, offensively, defensively, we haven’t done it yet,” Wilson said. “We’re hoping this is a good week for us to put it all together and make a run in the back-end of the season.”
MSU’s game against UAB this Saturday will begin at 11 a.m. and will be televised on Fox Sports South.