Mississippi State head coach Dan Mullen seemed to be in a good mood at his weekly press conference, and for good reason. Mullen cracked smiles and joked around with reporters while answering questions about MSU’s football team, a squad in prime position to jump over the .500 mark as the final stretch of the 2011 season approaches.
The Bulldogs are coming off a 28-16 victory against the Kentucky Wildcats, a result that gave State its first conference win of the 2011 season. With MSU’s overall record now 4-4 and homecoming festivities on the horizon, Mullen and the Bulldogs will now seek their first back-to-back wins of the season against the University of Tennessee Martin Skyhawks, State’s last non-conference opponent of the year and a FCS school. With a win vital to the Bulldogs attaining bowl eligibility, Mullen stressed the importance of crowd support for MSU’s game Saturday.
“This is obviously an exciting time,” Mullen said. “It’s always a great time around campus, and we need everybody. We need the home-field advantage. Especially when you play a school from the FCS, (they’re) not as used to playing in the hostile environments with the crowd noise and all of those issues, and we need our fans to come in, create a hostile environment and give us a significant home-field advantage this week.”
Although some people will immediately dismiss UT Martin because of its classification, the Skyhawks (5-3) are no slouch. Despite setbacks so far this season, the three losses UTM has suffered have been by a combined seven points. They are led offensively by junior signal-caller Derek Carr, who has passed for over 1,800 yards and thrown 18 touchdowns through just eight games. Junior running back Jason McNair, a native of Mississippi, has rushed for 663 yards and scored five touchdowns so far this season.
After watching film and evaluating the play of UTM’s offense, MSU linebackers coach Geoff Collins said he sees why the Skyhawks are in the upper-tier of scoring offense in their division.
“It’s a very solid offense,” Collins said. “You can tell they’re well coached, they have some tremendous athletes, their running back is a great athlete, great running back, and they stress you because they know exactly what they want to do with the football and how they want to try and out-leverage you, so the guys have to prepare like they do every week to be ready to play on Saturday.”
Defensively, the Skyhawks are led by their linebackers: Sophomore Ben Johnson, senior Jonathan Utley and junior Jarvis McCann, make up UTM’s top three tacklers. In the secondary, the Skyhawks are headlined by experience. Seniors T.J Drakeford and Kendal Harper are third and seventh, respectively, in team tackles, and both play a vital role in UT Martin’s defense.
Although it will be playing against experienced competition Saturday, the MSU wide receiving corps will look to continue progressing on what has been notable improvement in the Bulldogs’ last few outings. Also notable is how well quarterbacks Tyler Russell and Chris Relf have distributed the ball to different receivers, as eight different wide-outs have caught passes in MSU’s last two games. In addition to the receivers, tight ends Marcus Green, a senior, and Malcolm Johnson, a freshman, have also emerged as viable targets for the MSU quarterbacks. The duo combined for over 100 yards in State’s win over Kentucky and will look to continue playing a part in the Bulldogs’ passing game.
MSU wide receivers coach Angelo Mirando said the emergence of so many threats at the receiver position has everything to do with experience and trust.
“It’s just one of those things where you have to keep working, trust the system, trust your abilities, work on fundamentals and then have confidence going into the game and during the game,” he said. “It’s one of those where one guy makes a catch, then another guy makes a catch, then another guy makes a big play. It’s just one of those effects that everyone believes.”
MSU’s game Saturday against the Skyhawks is set to kickoff at 6:30 p.m. at Davis Wade Stadium and will be televised by Comcast Sports South.