2001: The Mississippi State Game
(Special thanks to Rayshun Reed for providing context and insight into this historic game.)
Reeling from the hard-fought battle in south Florida, the Trojans prepared for what would become their most important game to date. October 13, 2001 would become a special date for all Trojan fans in the coming years. It was a rainy Saturday. It was Homecoming. It was Mississippi State.
The Bulldogs invited Troy State to be their date for Homecoming. They were on a seven-game Homecoming winning streak, and hadn’t lost a home game to a non-conference opponent in over four years. Troy State opened as a 25-point underdog. These are the odds Trojans love.
MSU started the season ranked #20 in the preseason AP poll and #19 in the Coaches Poll. While I don’t think the ranking would’ve affected the game Troy played, the Bulldogs dropped a few games and fell from the rankings. This meant Troy’s first ranked win would have to wait.
Going into the game, it would be a dog fight (pun fully intended). The Trojans would need things to fall their way all game long to make certain that they would take a win back to the Wiregrass.
Trojan Legend Rayshun Reed spoke with us about that day. He described the pregame feeling pretty thoroughly.
“I think the feeling was excitement,” Reed said. “They had a great environment for football. Loud and boisterous, they were a formidable SEC team in that stretch of time.
“We had just recently played Miami in which we all would agree was by far the most talented team we would face, even after playing a highly ranked Nebraska team to open the season as well. So we had a veteran group of guys on offense and defense. We had young talent behind those guys that could play also, so we really felt we had seen our potential.
“We knew we could win if we played a good three-phase game against them.”
Even the Trojans’ bus driver bought into the excitement and hype for the game. As they pulled into the stadium, he turned to Larry Blakeney and said, “Great day for an upset.”
“I agree with you, brother,” Coach said. “Let’s go!”
Wins over Division I-A teams were not uncharted territory for Troy. The Trojans had won multiple games as a I-AA member including a win over Cincinnati in 1999.
While this game has rightly gone down in Troy lore, this 21-9 score was nothing like the 2007 drubbing Oklahoma State got in The Vet. This was a hard fought game that definitely could have went sideways for this Troy team.
Throughout the rain-soaked evening, Troy had five turnovers on both offense and special teams. Had Mississippi State not given back four of their own, the game could’ve easily gotten out of hand. Troy also stopped the Bulldogs three times on downs to get the ball back as well.
Reed says that the gameplan centered around stopping the Bulldog running backs Dontae Walker and Fred Reid. They also had to find a way past the big offensive line and force QB Wayne Madkin to pass, especially in 3rd down situations.
The defensive goals were simple: stop the run first and pressure the quarterback. They did this by playing eight men in the box, run blitzes and zone coverage to cover any gaps in the defense.
The one part of this game worth discussing, without even looking at the field, is the weather. The website Maroon and White Nation wrote a great story a few years back chronicling exactly how the weather developed and how that impacted the game.
The scheduled kickoff for the game was 1:30 pm. The rain in the Starkville area began around 10 am, leading to very damp conditions for the game. Near noon on that Saturday, a tornado watch was issued to the area around Starkville.
Almost a full hour later, the system began showing rotation that would indicate the potential for a tornado. They describe the rain coming down in sheets as the game kicked off.
Due to the inclement weather, both teams had a tough time driving down the field, leading to a scoreless first quarter. With 12:36 left on the clock, Brock Nutter finally broke the stalemate with a 37-yard touchdown pass to Demontray Carter.
As the teams were lining up for the extra point try, the weather sirens began blaring at 2:25 pm, signaling that a tornado had been spotted. They allowed the extra point try (and it was good), but the stadium was evacuated shortly thereafter.
The weather sirens led to the first tornado delay in the history of Mississippi State’s Davis Wade Stadium. It lasted an hour and ten minutes. The incoming weather covered the field with water.
According to Reed, the weather helped Troy in their game plan since MSU wanted to dominate the game running. They didn’t want to pass, which might have pulled the Trojan defense out of the 8-man box.
“Being that it rained, it made them play into our favor more,” Reed said.
Once both teams were ready to return to play, Troy kicked off to Mississippi State, who were ready to answer. They started at their own 29-yard line and quickly moved downfield. They had the ball at the Troy 30-yard line after a big pass play.
This set up one of the most iconic plays in Troy history.
Wayne Madkin, the Bulldog quarterback, tried his best to complete a pass to his running back, who was running toward the far sideline. Reed, a defensive back, read the play from the get-go and jumped the route. He caught the ball and was 5 yards downfield before the running back even realized what had happened.
By then, it was too late. Reed was gone for the pick six, wading into the end zone on a 73-yard interception and giving the Trojans a 14-0 lead after the extra point.
Blakeney said after the game that the Trojans were essentially running Prevent on that play, and they had only rushed three defenders. Reed just made a great jump on the ball that warranted the high-stepping celebration. The closest man to him was a defensive lineman, who was 10 yards away.
“I do remember seeing that route concept we worked on in practice of them trying to get the ball to one of their talented backs out of the backfield,” Reed said, remembering that play. “I remember we had a zone blitz on and i was dropping down to curl flat and as I was reading the QB, I saw one of our ends (#96 Davern Williams) right in the face of the QB.
“The back was coming out at that time, so my instincts just told me he had to let it go or take a sack. Fortunately, he threw it kind of flat footed and I was already in my break and made the play for our team.”
Reed’s interception remains one of the key plays in Troy’s Division I-A (FBS) history. It provided a spark to catapult this team to their first big win and I don’t think I would be overstating it to say that it changed the entire mood of the 2001 season.
The team came into Starkville limping at 1-3 on the season.
From this point on, Troy would only lose one more game.
Before we can get there, we have to see how the win in Davis Wade Stadium finished out. After Reed’s touchdown, Troy managed to make the Bulldogs punt again.
Heyward Skipper fielded the ball at the 25-yard line in the rain and made some magic happen. He juked the first defender, then broke three more tackles before Mississippi State finally took him down at the Bulldog’s 40-yard line.
Troy then kept the ball on the ground with Demontray Carter who ran three times for 14, 3, and finally 23 yards to score the final Troy touchdown of the game. This put Troy up 21-0 with 4:39 left in the first half.
From here, the Trojans just had to hold on and hope.
The Bulldogs gave them cause to worry, as their offense finally began to click after the third Trojan score. Justin Jenkins picked up the first MSU touchdown with 1:19 left in the second quarter on a 22-yard pass from Wayne Madkin. The extra point try was no good, giving the Trojans a commanding 21-6 lead going into the half.
The only scoring in the second half was a 24-yard field goal from Bulldog John Michael Marlin, giving the game its final score of 21-9.
I asked Reed about the moment the team knew they won the game.
“I think we knew we had positioned ourselves to win in like the last five minutes of the game, when they were kind of frantic and playing hurry-up offense in addition to being out of their game plan,” he said. “It still felt like we could let the game slip away if we didn’t keep them out of the end zone and let the crowd back in it. So it was just a relief once the final horn blew and we knew we had made history for Troy in that moment.”
The credit for this win needs to be placed on the shoulders of the defense. Troy was on the wrong end of nearly every statistical category, but came away with the win.
The Trojans had fewer first downs (19-11), fewer rushing yards (128-82), fewer passing yards (34-26), and a lower time of possession (33:52-26:08). Troy only led statistically in having more return yards, punting yards, and fewer penalties.
Brock Nutter had easily his worst passing day of the season, only throwing for 130 yards on 10 passes with 3 interceptions and one touchdown. However, you can’t blame the man for having a bad day through the air, when he was up against a literal storm.
Demontray Carter led Trojan rushers with 59 yards on 14 carries. LeBarron Black added another 15 on 10 carries.
Heyward Skipper led the Trojans with 4 catches for 46 yards. Jason Samples caught 2 for 36 yards. Carter took his lone pass to the house for 37 yards and Thomie Venisee had 28 on his single catch of the afternoon. Carter’s 107 all-purpose yards earned him the USA Today Independent Player of the Week.
Fullback Chris Cox was given a strange stat line of 1 catch for -21 yards. He caught the ball in the flat, before getting tackled hard by MSU’s Shawn Byrdsong, and losing a fumble. The Bulldogs recovered it 21 yards back on their own 11 yard line. Even backed up against the wall, the Trojan defense held off the Bulldog offense.
Plays like this are why the defense was key to this victory. Even quarterback Brock Nutter echoed this.
“If there was a time when our defense stepped up and had one of their best games, it was this one,” Nutter said. “They did a great job of putting pressure on the quarterback. Heck, they bailed us out a lot.”
Defensive coordinator Wayne Bolt was absolutely ecstatic with the play of his defense.
“This is the most complete game we have played defensively since I have been here (since 1991),” Bolt said. “Defense is about intensity, effort, and execution. Today we were excellent in all phases.”
The Mighty Trojan Death Machine really showed up to stop the Bulldogs. There were 14 QB hurries, 9 pass breakups, and 9 tackles for loss for 52 yards. Corey Sears and Davern Williams both had 2 TFLs each, while Williams tacked on an interception of his own. With his, Reed’s, and another by Freeman White, the Trojans created a very difficult day for Wayne Madkin and the Bulldog receivers.
Corey Sears was all over the place with 14 tackles and Jose Gamboa followed right behind him with 12. Freeman White was the other Trojan in double digit tackles with 11.
The late Naazir Yamini had 7 tackles. Troy Hall of Famer and two-time Super Bowl winner Osi Umenyiora had six tackles with a TFL added in. Other key contributors were Jimmy McClain (6 tackles), Reed (4 tackles along with his INT return), and 4 tackles each for Davern Williams, Ronald Harper, and Derrick Ansley.
If anyone was surprised about the outcome of this game, it wasn’t the Trojans.
“We knew we were going to win on Monday,” Nutter said. “We started on Monday practice to win this game. We knew if we could string four quarters together we could win the game. We are not surprised.”
Linebacker Jimmy McClain agreed.
“I’ve been telling people all along we were going to win,” he said. “Nobody wanted to listen to me.”
Trust me, after that win, the whole college football world was listening to all the news coming from that small community in Pike County, Alabama.
I asked Reed to detail what the win did for the team in the following weeks, and how it changed the tenor of the locker room.
“That win was a tremendous boost to our confidence for the second half of the season because we had played a couple of good halves against the two best teams in the nation and faded in the second half,” he said. “So after that game we were pretty big heroes of our time and we could finally go out and play knowing that we just had to play all 60 minutes at a high level and we would be in position to win each week with the guys we had.
“We actually came back the week after that game and was still riding high from the Mississippi State game and laid an egg against Cal State Northridge before we woke up and played better in the second half. I think we played Maryland late in the year on the road and they beat us, but they were also a Top 10 Power 5 program at the time. But overall we took care of business against every team were were expected to beat.
“It was a great first year of Division I football.”
After what was easily the biggest win in program history to that point, the Trojans returned home to the friendly confines of Veterans Memorial Stadium for only the second time in the 2001 season.
They would have a two-game home stand against Cal. St.- Northridge and Southern Utah, before returning to the road against Maryland.
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