We've Been Waiting Six Years For This

....and if you're like me, you had almost forgotten what it felt like. For Mississippi State, Saturday's 19-14 upset over Auburn was that jug of water after 6 years of wandering hopelessly in the desert. For Auburn, the game didn't have quite the same feeling. I suspect for them it felt more like this.....

...or maybe it was more like this.


Yeah definitely more like that. I don't really know how it happened. The passing game was nonexistent, literally. 3 quarterbacks combined to go 5-18 for 41 yards. How do you beat anybody with that? Somehow they pulled it off (5 turnovers certainly helped) and won on the road at Auburn. For all the grief I give Croom, I have to give him credit for Saturday. When Henig went out and Carroll threw what should have been a pick 6, he saw the passing game was not going to work on this day. From that point on Croom played Jackieball and ran the ball right down Auburns throat. Every now and then he would think about trying the pass again, but inevitably would soon go back to Dixon and Ducre. In hindsight it really was a thing of beauty and was reminiscent of the glory years of the 90s. Auburn knew the run was coming but Mississippi State was just more physical, that is all there is to it. On defense, MSU was again more physical, laying monster hits all over the field. There was confidence, there was attitude, that defense looked like they wanted to hurt you and it was so good to see. It has been too long.

In my personal opinion this is by far the biggest victory in Croom's career. That isn't hard to do considering he has only 11, but nevertheless. What about Florida you say? Or perhaps Alabama? Well those were all well and good, but they were both late in the year when the season was already lost. Sure they were big upsets but they were completely meaningless other than to make us fans feel a little less bad about our team. This victory though, this is different. MSU is sitting at 2-1 with one of those wins being a huge SEC road win. This is big, this is really big. Croom MUST, absolutely MUST build off of this. If confidence is any factor then the team should be sitting pretty. They blew out Tulane 2 weeks ago and followed it up by upsetting Auburn at their house. I would imagine LSU is pretty much forgotten at this point. Can this be sustained? Dare I even mention the B word? No, not yet. I don't want to jinx us. Besides this team has risen up briefly before to surprise under Croom, only to flounder back into the abyss of irrelevance. That is entirely possible again. Mississippi State is on a 2 game winning streak though (is that even a streak? I don't care, I'm saying it is.) and I am going to enjoy every second of this. My hopes are officially up.