Mississippi State’s (2-3, 1-2) bowl hopes went down drastically Saturday afternoon when they fell to the Auburn Tigers (4-2, 2-1) by a score of 38-14.

Coming off of a bye week, MSU looked to a pivotal SEC matchup against Auburn. Things did not go their way as MSU found themselves down 35-0 at halftime. MSU was dominated in all phases of the game in the first half.

At halftime, MSU had just 91 yards, compared to Auburn’s 335. By the games end, the Tigers had 432 yards compared to MSU’s 289, but the big killer for MSU was on third down. Auburn went 6-12 on third down while MSU went 6-16.

After Auburn’s starting running back Kerryon Johnson went down early in the first half, backup Kamryn Pettway came into the game and rushed 39 times for 169 yards and three touchdowns. Mullen talked about Johnson and the defenses struggles as a whole.

“That was 3-yards and a cloud of dust pounding away from us,” Mullen said. “The problem I think we had defensively was when we did get the stops to get them into distance situations we didn’t play very good second down defense.”

MSU struggled in every part of the game. The defense could not get off the field in the first half, giving up 17 first downs before halftime and 22 total in the game. Then the offense could not stay on the field in the first half, only getting five, but finished with a respectable 16 first downs.

There were a few bright spots for MSU coming out of the game. Redshirt freshman wide receiver Keith Mixon scored his first career touchdown on a 37-yard pass from Nick Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald hit Mixon on the sideline and Mixon barely stayed in bounds before running up field and scoring. He also had another catch, an 18-yarder, giving him a total of two catches for 55-yards which was best on the team today.

 “It was a great play call by coach Mullen,” Mixon said. “I just made a play, tried to stay in bounds and the DB came on a cut, and he missed the ball, and I caught it and made a touchdown.”

It was an exciting start as well. Auburn opened up with the ball, and on the first drive of the game, quarterback Sean White’s pass was deflected and picked off by MSU’s Kivon Coman, giving MSU early field position as they started on the Auburn 19-yard-line. They got no points out of the play, however, as Westin Graves missed a field goal.

Overall, the bad heavily outweighed the good. Being down 35-0 at halftime does not leave MSU with a good taste in their mouth. While they did play better in the second half, a lot of that could be attributed to Auburn trying to run the clock. Riche Brown talked about how the team needs to respond to the game.

“It’s always a tough one whenever you lose, but you’ve got to stick together as a family,” Brown said. “There are going to be good times and bad times when you are a football player; you’ve got to learn how to get back up and keep fighting.”     

Mississippi State will try to get back to a .500 record next Friday as they travel to Provo, Utah and take on Brigham Young University. Their game against BYU will kick off at 9:15 p.m.