Back When: The day Troy went to Starkville and announced itself

Five games. That’s all Troy State needed.

The Trojans were barely a month into life as a Division I-A program when they boarded buses for Starkville, Miss., on Oct. 13, 2001 — their first game ever against a Southeastern Conference opponent as a I-A team. Mississippi State was hosting homecoming. Troy was a 26-point underdog. The Bulldogs were struggling at 1-4, but they were still SEC, and Troy was still the program that had just moved up from I-AA.

None of that mattered by halftime.

Troy State jumped on Mississippi State early and led 21-0 before the Bulldogs knew what hit them. Demetrius Carter hauled in a 37-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Brock Nutter. Rashon Bull took an interception 73 yards to the house. Then Carter added a 23-yard scoring run for good measure. By the time the teams hit the locker room, the Trojans owned Scott Field — a stadium built in 1914, the second-oldest venue in Division I-A football.

“This is wonderful. I can’t say enough about it,” Nutter told the Dothan Eagle afterward. “As a senior group we knew we were going to win a big game this year. It was just a matter of when we were going to play four quarters and shock somebody.”

They picked a hell of a day to do it.

A tornado warning in the second quarter — the first in Scott Field history — sent both teams to the locker rooms for an hour and 10 minutes. When play resumed, the field was waterlogged, the scoreboard clock was dead and officials kept time from the field. Half the crowd had gone home.

Troy didn’t care. The Trojans came back out and finished the job.

The second half wasn’t pretty. Troy’s offense coughed up four turnovers, handing Mississippi State chance after chance to climb back in. The Bulldogs outgained the Trojans in total yardage. But the Troy defense — coached by coordinator Wayne Bolt — slammed the door every single time, recording four sacks and suffocating everything Mississippi State tried to run.

“This is the most complete game we have played defensively — ever,” Bolt told the Dothan Eagle. “Today the defense played well in all three phases. We executed better today than we have since I have been here.”

The final: Troy State 21, Mississippi State 9.

In the corridor outside the visiting locker room, Troy State students who had driven five hours through tornado weather surrounded the players. They chanted “TSU.” They celebrated a win that no one outside that fan base had seen coming.

No one except the guys wearing the uniform.

“We’re happy we won, but we’re not shocked,” receiver Heyward Skipper told the Dothan Eagle. “We came into this week expecting to win this game.”

For Larry Blakeney, in his 11th year building the program from the ground up, the win carried a weight that went beyond the final score.

“As far as my head coaching career goes, this is the biggest win I’ve been a part of,” he told the Dothan Eagle.

Then he said the quiet part out loud.

“This validates the move over.”

Even Jackie Sherrill, the Mississippi State head coach pacing the Scott Field sideline in the fourth quarter, gave Troy its due.

“You have to congratulate Troy State,” Sherrill told the Dothan Eagle. “They did an excellent job and they deserved what they came to do. We got in a hole early and we couldn’t get ourselves out.”

Five games into the I-A era, Troy State had gone into an SEC stadium on homecoming as 26-point underdogs, survived a tornado delay, overcome four second-half turnovers and walked out with a 12-point win. They weren’t just on the schedule anymore. They were on the map.