Takeaways after Mississippi State football snaps losing-streak vs UMass

A win is a win. After a 1-7 start to the season that hadn't seen the Bulldogs get a win since their season-opener, Mississippi State football managed to snap their losing-streak against the UMass Minutemen by a score of 45-20. State, now 2-7 on the season, started the game about as poorly as they could've, but they got their acts together quickly enough to race to an easy victory. Here's what we can take away from the game...

Despite a slow start, we finally saw an explosive run game from the Bulldogs

Mississippi State's offense couldn't have started off any worse than they did. They opened the game with consecutive three-and-outs and -9 yards of offense. They had just one first down and 10 yards after the first quarter. But then they found a groove, scoring touchdowns on six of their next eight drives. The run game was a big reason why. State had it's best rushing performance of the year with 241 yards on 8.0 yards per carry. We finally saw the explosive rushing attack this offense is supposed to create with Johnnie Daniels, Davon Booth, and Xavier Gayten all breaking off long runs for scores. Yes, it's against UMass, but the Bulldogs hadn't done that all year. Hopefully they can build off that and take pressure of Michael Van Buren.

This defense is still awful, but at least they managed to get some consistent stops

While State's offense was stalling early in the game, the State defense looked like their normal, horrible selves. UMass opened the game with 113 yards, 10 points, and almost 11 minutes of possession time. The Minutemen were running all over the Bulldog defense. The end of the game numbers don't look good either considering the opponent. UMass put 20 on the board and had 199 rushing yards at over four yards per rush. For a SEC team, that's rough. However, after their bad start, the defense did manage to get stops. After getting an interception on UMass' third drive, the Bulldogs forced four-straight punts. If nothing else, they were consistently getting off the field, allowing State to take control. I don't expect that to spark any sort of change, but it was a minor positive.

Thank goodness, State got a win

After seven-straight losses, including last week's humiliation at the hands of an Arkansas team that got humiliated themselves this week, there was a legitimate concern that Mississippi State wouldn't win another game and have a year on par with the '88 "Tech and 10" team. At a bare minimum, they've managed to avoid that. And it's nice that, despite the ugly start, they managed to win this game with relative ease like you'd expect a power conference team to. No, I don't think this suddenly leads to a strong finish to this season. In all likelihood, the Bulldogs are going 2-10 and winless in the SEC. But 2-10 is better than 1-11, so for now, we'll enjoy a win.