Best quotes from Mississippi State's coach and players after loss to Texas

For the second-straight, Mississippi State has snatched away defeat from the jaws of victory.

A week after losing to Florida on an interception inside field goal range, the Bulldogs allowed a Texas offense that had been inept all game to comeback from a 17-point deficit and win in overtime.

When Davon Booth scored a 62-yard touchdown on a shovel pass from Blake Shapen, Mississippi State led 38-21 with 12:29 left in the game.

At that moment, it seemed like the Bulldogs would get a much-needed SEC win. Instead, the Bulldogs got a fanbase that’s run out of the goodwill built early in the season.

There’ no sugar coating. Mississippi State should’ve won. And based on the post-game press conferences, the Bulldogs know it too.

Here are some of the best quotes from coach Jeff Lebby, Shapen and safety Jahron Manning.

Lebby on his message to the players…

We’re going to wake up tomorrow morning, tee it up next Saturday in Fayetteville, and for our guys, there is one way this gets fixed and that’s us being together. We’re going to find out what kind of foundation we have as we go on the road to play another really good football team. Having the ability to win the game in the fourth quarter, we got to find a way to knock that door down. Incredibly disappointing, frustrating to say the least. Our guys played incredibly hard. We were ready to play, didn’t play great early and then found ways to respond. But we got to finish the game and we got to finish the game and go win. Our guys understand that and we’re going to have to get our ass back to work, pick ourselves up off the mat and go.

Lebby on fourth down roughing the passer penalty in the fourth quarter…

It’s come up in three huge football games where we’re off the field. Playing smart football. Penalties in those situations are absolute killers, because you’re creating another opportunity for the other side of the ball. Our guys having the ability to play with great discipline in those moments. We’ve got to clean that up in a huge way.

Shapen on mood of locker room…

In that situation, to be honest with you, guys are frustrated and mad, to be honest, I think that's a conversation Sunday, Monday, whenever you come back in and you get back together as a team, I think you have that conversation. But after a loss like that, it's frustrating, everybody understands it. So not much being said by me right now after that.

Shapen on late-game clock management…

In that situation, they got three timeouts left. So our goal is to keep getting first downs. Obviously, it's getting close to that four minute mode and things like that. They still got three timeouts left. They're still in the game. We're going to go run our plays and move the ball. That was the goal. I mean, we were able to move the ball all day. For us, we just got to be able to sustain the drives and just execute in the right way.

Manning on defense’s struggles in fourth quarter…

I just felt like as a defense, we got complacent. We got to learn how to close out games and finish games. So that's going to be the stress this week during practice, finishing games and closing them out. We had them exactly where we wanted them. We just got to finish and do the rest.

Manning on emotions of players after the game…

Just trying to keep guys together, not letting stuff like this split us apart. Times get hard, we gotta stick together through everything… It's pretty difficult. It's a couple plays during the game that might be game changers, well that are game changers for us. Just gotta learn from it, continue to build, and put it behind us and move on to the next.