Music City Bowl

Music City Bowl Preview

Mississippi State will make back-to-back years with a bowl game appearance in this year's Music City Bowl vs. Wake Forest.

Tyler Russell sprained his MCL in practice on December 13th, and Dylan Favre announced his intentions to transfer to Pearl River Community College just three days prior to that. Although Russell will be available to play, Chris Relf should take nearly all the snaps at quarterback in his final game at MSU.

Here are the matchups:

Wake Forest offense vs. Mississippi State defense

Rushing, 118.9 (96th) vs. 161 (65th)
Passing, 255.6 (36th) vs. 194.9 (25th)
Total, 374.5 (76th) vs. 355.9 (42nd)
Scoring, 26.8 (62nd) vs. 19.9 (20th)

Mississippi State offense vs. Wake Forest defense

Rushing, 168.8 (45th) vs. 162.9 (70th)
Passing, 186.2 (94th) vs. 236.2 (72nd)
Total, 355.1 (87th) vs. 399.1 (75th)
Scoring, 25.5 (72nd) vs. 27.8 (70th)

One thing you can definitely conclude from those statistics is that Wake's D is 70-75th best in the nation for sure. MSU's defense is undoubtedly better, and should be the best the Demon Deacons have faced all year with the slight possibility of Florida State.

Look for both teams to come out firing. State has fared well early in games against weaker competition (except UAB), and Wake has gotten off to some pretty quick starts. Wake Forest has also blown some pretty sizable leads, but hopefully it won't come to that. MSU is the better team here, and should have the vast majority of the fans attending the game.

MSU 31 Wake 17


JB