Five best quotes from Jeff Lebby after Mississippi State's win

The Bulldogs' second-year coach got his first SEC win in a comeback 38-35 victory against Arkansas.

Mississippi State Bulldogs coach Jeff Lebby against the Arkansas Razorbacks at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville, Ark. | Nilsen Roman-DawgsonSI Images

It wasn’t very pretty and it almost didn’t happen, but it did and Mississippi State has its first SEC win since 2023.

It was also the first conference win for Bulldogs’ coach Jeff Lebby, whose team was down by 14 points twice in the fourth quarter and still won 38-35.

Afterwards, Lebby talked to reporters about the game. Here are his five best quotes from the post-game press conference:

On the win…

I'm incredibly proud of our guys. I'm so proud of our fight, playing the next play. We've seen it non-stop. But then making the plays in the fourth quarter to win the football game, having the ability to convert on a fourth down, after everything we went through in the game. For our guys to keep believing, to play the next play, to execute in a time like that to me it shows toughness. And that's what I just got through talking about in there. Tough people win in life, we've got a tough football team. I'm proud of those guys. And we've got a lot left in front of us.

On Blake Shapen…

We got buzzed down and were made to look at Blake after he took the big hit. Then we had to go through the box checking and make sure he wasn't symptomatic, to be able to come back in the game. That takes a while. Blake never had symptoms, he felt great. We wanted to be able to get him back in the game. I'm proud of Kamario for the way he played, and did what he did on those two touchdown drives.

But we needed an old guy to be able to go win this game that way. And he did. He came back in and plays unbelievably tough. And he leads us down the field to go win the game there in the fourth quarter.

On leaving Kamario Taylor in the game longer…

No. I was wanting to know what was going on with Blake and making sure that he was OK. In that situation I wanted to have the opportunity to have Blake, who has done it and lived it and been around it. I thought that was really important. Again, what Kamario did was huge for us and we needed it in a big way. But I wanted to get back to Blake and it was able to work out.

On the fourth quarter defense…

Incredible. And we did play a bunch of the drop-eight stuff. We wanted eyes on the quarterback I think you have to play that way against these guys. So you bleed a little bit at times which isn't perfect. But we needed eyes on the football because of the quarterback. For us to play the way we played on the last couple of drives defensively is just awesome. Because it again was far from perfect all day but then we are able to turn it on and get off the field and create the stops to give us a chance to go win the game.

On Anthony Evans III…

He's been a really good ball-in-hand guy for us. He almost turns into a running back when he gets it in his hands and plays really tough. I loved the fact that he was able to go make the play to get the first down. And then obviously get in the end zone and go score. So some great moments. I'm going to continue to talk about toughness. You've got no chance inside this conference if you're not built that way. We've got to continue to build on that.