STARKVILLE, Miss. \u2014 Davis Wade Stadium was rocking the cowbells were ringing and Mississippi State felt primed for an upset.<\/p>\n
But then Georgia football happened, as the No. 5-ranked Bulldogs hunkered down all over the maroon-clad home team, in a 41-21 UGA victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe picked a bad time,\u201d Mississippi State coach Jeff Lebby said, \u201cnot to be at our best against a really, really good football team.\u201d<\/p>\n
The No. 5-ranked Georgia program (8-1, 6-1 SEC) continued to build momentum heading toward its 7:30 p.m. showdown against No. 11-ranked Texas next Saturday.<\/p>\n
Starkville turned out to be little more than a speed bump along the road, much to the dismay of Lebby, who had seen his team take Texas and No. 25 Tennessee to overtime in home games this season.<\/p>\n
Georgia rolled up a season-high 567 yards on Mississippi State while keeping the Maroon Bulldogs\u2019 pass game largely grounded. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pissed off and disappointed because our people showed up,\u201d said Lebby, who saw 53,017 fans work to fill the seats of the 61,337-seat stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot be more appreciative for what our stadium looked like today and what the town and community have done with this energy and this buzz for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mississippi State starting quarterback Blake Shapen was largely ineffective before leaving the game with an injury late in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
Shapen, who was sacked three times and fumbled, was 10-of-15 passing for a season-low 85 yards.<\/p>\n
\u201cMan he was hurting and wasn\u2019t able to get back in the game,\u201d Lebby said. \u201cBlake felt like he could have got back in there, he was going to be very limited \u2026 it was the right thing to do to play (Kamario Taylor).\u201d<\/p>\n
Two weeks ago, Shapen passed for a season-high 381 yards and four touchdowns against Texas in a game Mississippi State led by 17 points in the fourth quarter before losing 45-38 in overtime. <\/p>\n
Georgia, however, came at Shapen and Mississippi State early and often, recording a season-high three sacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had the ability to have some run game going, but we were never able to sustain, and that was the most frustrating part,\u201d said Lebby, whose team was out-rushed by Georgia 303-149. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe did not have explosives; I think they had five 30-plus (yardage) plays, we had one, so we got dominated in the explosive game, which has not been us, again, frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mississippi State, which entered the game leading the SEC with 16 pass plays of more than 40 yards, had just one pass play longer than 25 yards – a 57-yard deep ball after the game was decided in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Lebby lamented the end of the first half, when he saw the game slip away from his team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way the first half ended and the way they started the second half, to me that\u2019s when the game gets completely away from us,\u201d Lebby said of UGA scoring 21 points over a six-minute span at the end of the first half and beginning of the second half to take a 38-7 lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey made great plays, and we don\u2019t make the plays \u2026. their tight ends made a couple of incredible plays for some chunks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oscar Delp had three catches for 41 yards and scored on an 8-yard touchdown catch, and freshman Elyiss Williams made a sensational leaping catch 24-yard catch to the MSU 4-yard line, setting up the UGA\u2019s go-ahead (second quarter, 10-7) score.<\/p>\n
Georgia\u2019s run game, led by Nate Frazier\u2019s career-high 181-yard performance, also featured 31 yards rushing from Gunner Stockton, who was 18-of-29 passing for 264 yards with three touchdowns.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, the backs for them did a really good job,\u201d Lebby said. \u201cOur edges weren\u2019t what they need to be, and we didn\u2019t tackle the way we tackled prior to today \u2026. and the two tight ends played non-stop, and that O-Line, and those two backs, they played better than we did, and that\u2019s the reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
More realities: Mississippi State has lost 12 straight home games to SEC competition dating back to a 39-33 home win over Auburn on Nov. 5, 2022, and Georgia has now won 47 straight against unranked opponents.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STARKVILLE, Miss. \u2014 Davis Wade Stadium was rocking the cowbells were ringing and Mississippi State felt primed for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[5691,44930,1607,2662,399,19504,398,98726,396,397,7702,99,19501],"class_list":["post-280181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-arizona-state-sun-devils","tag-big-12-conference","tag-college-football","tag-college-sports","tag-football","tag-mississippi-state-bulldogs","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-college-football","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sec","tag-sports","tag-tennessee-volunteers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}