LSU Defense Clamps Down, Tigers Handle Mississippi State, 19-6

Starkville has cowbells. You should understand that the cowbell is an instrument of nuance. In full throat, it sounds like you are sitting beneath a cascade of ladles raining down on an immense steel-plated floor. This can last for up to a minute, and when it catches the roof of the pressbox and rolls into your ears it will leave them ringing.

The last song in that list was cranked without shame before the opening kickoff. The crowd cloinked along with each “WHO? WHOWHOWHO?” The Miss State players hopped in unison and pointed left, then right with the song’s chorus, and for an instant you sort of forgot yourself for a moment, and forgot that this song was eleven years old, and that everyone was hopping up and down in a self-described cow town in Mississippi like it was the first time it had ever frazzled a pair of speakers.

(clears throat)

Well, then:

Lee missed on just six passes, one of which went to the other team. The interception snapped a streak of 131 attempts without a pick, the second-best mark in school history. But outside of the one mistake, Lee played mistake free, keeping his defense out of a hole and moving the offense along at a slow, but steady, pace.

It wasn’t as though Lee had to carry the team -- with an incredibly stout defense and a strong running game, he didn’t have to play outside himself. Instead, Lee managed the game, and it paid off for the Tigers.

After the most recent field goal, the Tigers dialed up an onside kick attempt, which MSU dealt with responsibly. The Bulldogs soon punted, appearing to pin LSU deep in their own country. The way this game has gone, you kind of expected LSU to run out the remaining 15 minutes on this next drive. Alas, it was ruled a touchback, which will leave Mississippi State with a few minutes for some field goal drives.

Mississippi State fans, you are in spectacular form tonight. Below the jump you’ll find a photograph of a shirt bearing a bit of risque humor! in reference to Houston Nutt, the coach of MSU’s in-state rival, Ole Miss. Mississippi State is not playing Houston Nutt’s team tonight. Starkville isn’t going out of its way to make sense right now, and that’s wonderful.

Via @bubbaprog after having been spotted by everyone all at once (click image to better appreciate):

Learning isn’t only for the class room. Educators both progressive and classical have emphasized the value of gaining knowledge from life itself, and not just professors and books. So when it was announced that Mississippi State University would cancel its Thursday classes in advance of an intercollegiate athletics contest against student-athlete representatives from Louisiana State University, you shouldn’t have feared that learning would fall by the wayside for the evening.

In fact, while preparing for festivities, one student was given the challenge of altering a confounding word puzzle into a sentence. Success:

The Tigers lead, 3-0, is the short way of saying that.

For more on this game, visit Mississippi State blog For Whom The Cowbell Tolls and LSU blog And The Valley Shook.

NOTE: Confused? See the quick glossary at the bottom. Since we are only two games into the schedule, opponent adjustments are basically meaningless thus far, and most of the numbers below fall into one of three categories: 1) opponent-adjusted “+” numbers that are mostly culled from preseason projections, 2) raw, unadjusted numbers reliant on the quality of teams’ first two opponents (they are the categories lacking the “+”), or 3) 2010 numbers.

Time to make some sense out of tonight’s big game on ESPN. Or at least, as much sense as can be made through a Benadryl coma and a two-week-old’s sleep schedule.

Two weeks into the season, LSU’s profile has risen. They have gone from receiving one first-place vote in the AP poll to 17, and from two to seven in the USA Today poll. If they are to remain that high, however, they are going to have to put on some miles. In the coming weeks, they face West Virginia, Tennessee and Alabama on the road, but first, it’s a Thursday night trip to the home of the cowbell: Starkville, Mississippi.

In two game this season, the Mississippi State Bulldogs have rushed for a combined 642 yards on the ground.

In two games this season, the LSU Tigers are giving up just 45.5 yards per game on the ground.