Vegas SEC Predictions
Southern Miss at Mississippi State
Opening Line: Missisippi State by 30.5
Maroon and White Nation
Like in-state rival Ole Miss, Mississippi State enters the season with a lot of hype and expectations to make noise. But also like the Ole Miss Rebels, they’ll have an extremely hard time doing that in by far the toughest division in college football. Quarterback Dak Prescott might be a dark-horse Heisman candidate, and if he is to help the Bulldogs make any noise in the conference, they have to win all of their out of conference games this year.
Southern Miss is a great tune-up team after going 1-11 last year in head coach Todd Monken’s first year, and this team was honestly awful all the way around. Limiting turnovers will be the focus of the team this year, and Monken does have lots of starters back specifically on defense, so it should be good enough to at least make games closer this year.
Prediction
Southern Miss lost games by an average of 24 points last year. That margin will reduce this year with more experience and hopefully not throwing 26 interceptions on the year, but it won’t show in Starkville on Saturday. The Bulldogs are a very deep team that would have at least 11 wins in any other conference, and they’ll roll over the Golden Eagles. They won’t cover the spread, but they’ll come very close.
Mississippi State: 35 Southern Miss: 7