Auburn falls at Mississippi State to clang of 38-23

STARKVILLE, Miss. – The soundtrack to Auburn's misery – a town packed to the gills with Maroon and White-clad, cowbell clanging Mississippi State fans – began before the Tigers even arrived at Davis Wade Stadium on Saturday.

Those bells kept ringing all afternoon as both Mississippi State, led by Heisman Trophy favorite Dak Prescott and his 367 total yards and three touchdowns, and Auburn, which fell behind early thanks to two turnovers on its first two offensive plays and never fully recovered, contributed to the glee of the Bulldogs fans in attendance.

Nick Marshall tried to engineer another Tigers comeback, as he has so many times before, but the task was too much as No. 2 Auburn fell to No. 3 Mississippi State, 38-23, before a Davis Wade Stadium record crowd of 62,945.

Marshall's first pass was tipped and deflected right to MSU safety Jay Hughes. Three plays later, Prescott connected with De'Runnya Wilson for a 34-yard touchdown.

With a chance to quickly put the first bug play behind them, the Tigers compounded their problems.

Marshall threw a seven-yard pass to D'haquille Williams, who was drilled by Taveze Calhoun, knocking the ball free and Benardrick McKinney recovered.

This time it took the Bulldogs four plays to score, thanks to a one-yard scoring run by Josh Robinson (19 carries for 97 yards and two touchdowns), which made it 14-0 just 3:30 into the game.

"We started out in a hole," Auburn coach Gus Malzahn said. "Their crowd got into it. … You got to do something to quiet the crowd and we didn't do a whole lot to do that."

It was eerily similar to Auburn's trouble at the start of its game at LSU last season, with two early turnovers leading to touchdowns and Auburn unable to ever fully recover.

Though Malzahn called Saturday's issues "a completely different thing" than last year's futility on the Bayou, several players acknowledged a similar feeling.

"It felt kind of the same," defensive back Robenson Therezie said.

But like the loss at LSU, Auburn clawed back.

"We've been in this situation before, probably not that quick, but we've been there before and we had no doubt in our mind that we could put up a fight," center and offensive captain Reese Dismukes said of the early deficit.

After MSU took a 21-0 lead, Auburn scored 13 straight points to cut the gap to one possession, but Prescott led an eight-play 75-yard scoring drive, capped off with a 15-yard touchdown run, to give the Bulldogs a 28-13 lead at the break.

"I had one of my subpar games of the season and I didn't play very well," said Prescott, who was 18-for-34 for 246 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions and 121 rushing yards and two scores. "My teammates rallied around me and did a great job of making plays."

The Bulldogs capitalized off Auburn's four turnovers, the most in Malzahn's tenure as coach, with 21 points – the first points the Tigers allowed off turnovers this season.

"You're on the road and you turn the ball over, it's hard to win," Malzahn said. "On our turnovers they turned into points and their turnovers we didn't do a really good job turning those into points."

The Bulldogs had their fair share of issues, with turnovers on four straight drives in the first half, but Auburn only scored 13 points off those errors and had to settle for three field goals on six trips to the red zone.

"We didn't get the job done," Cameron Artis-Payne said of the red zone struggles.

Marshall (17-for-35 for 209 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions with 100 yards rushing) connected with Williams on a 15-yard touchdown, the second for both, to make it 28-20 with 6:09 to go in the third, capping a season-long 99-yard scoring drive.

Twice Auburn had the ball with a chance to tie and could not manage to as much as cross into MSU territory.

Due to their struggles, which affected the defense early on as well, the reigning SEC Champions no longer control their own destiny at the midpoint of the season.

Mississippi State (6-0, 3-0 SEC) will likely be the new No. 1 team in the polls following the biggest win in program history.

"We're bowl eligible," Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen said. "Right now we haven't even guaranteed ourselves a winning season. ... But as tis point we're right where we wanted to be."

While Malzahn said he wasn't thinking of the impact Saturday's loss had on Auburn's chances of earning a berth in the College Football Playoff, he and several players are both confident in themselves.

"I'm thinking we just got beat by one of the better teams in the country," Malzahn said. "We didn't play our best. We're still one of the better teams; I feel strong about that."