The clock is winding down and you can feel the tension on Alabama’s sideline.

Mississippi State got the ball back with 3:58 to play and the fact they’re driving isn’t sitting well on Bryant-Denny Stadium’s west side.

Fourth-and-five: converted. Fourth-and-10: pass interference, first down. The Bulldogs crossed the 50-yard line and Nick Saban looked mad. This wasn’t the plan on homecoming Saturday. The sense of urgency is peaking as the visitors call a timeout with 1:08 left. A third-down conversion gave Mississippi State a first-and-goal from the 4-yard line before Saban really lost it.

Another pass interference flag — only Alabama’s third penalty of the night — sent Saban down a West Virginia country road. One more completion left Mississippi State at the 1-yard line and the clock ticking toward zeros.

Quarterback Will Rogers took the final snap of the nigh and handed it to Jo’quavious Marks.

Touchdown.

Game over.

Final score: Alabama 30, Mississippi State 6.

The look on DeMarcco Hellams face would’ve made you think the numbers were reversed. The Alabama safety just shook his head, helmet in hand, as he walked toward the locker room in an awkward end to an otherwise fruitful night. The intensity wasn’t quite like two weeks ago when Texas A&M’s buzzer beater hit the rim in a 24-20 Alabama win, but there was still a charge in an emptying stadium Saturday night.

Coming off complete humiliation, this Crimson Tide defense played 59:59 of shutout ball. The stats were ridiculous — 15 passes broken up, four sacks and seven quarterback hurries.

And until the final second, zero points.

“I was a kinda pissed off, I’m not going to lie,” Alabama linebacker Henry To’o To’o said. “I was kinda pissed off. We just have to finish. That was one of our big things. We wanted to shut them out with a zero but definitely super — I wasn’t mad, but I was kinda disappointed in ourselves knowing what we were able to do if we were able to put our minds into finishing and closing out a game like that.”

That was, in fact, Mississippi State’s first trip to a Bryant-Denny Stadium end zone since 2014 when it lost 25-20 as the No. 1 team in the nation. Alabama outscored the Bulldogs 146-3 in the four games since, until the final second Saturday.

Still, 146-9 isn’t bad.

“Pissed off,” To’o To’o said when informed of the almost four-game TD-less streak. “Pissed off. Still pissed off.”

This was about principle.

And maybe a little pride.

Nobody would deny the previous seven days were a gut check of another degree for this Crimson Tide defense. The 52-49 loss at Tennessee represented the largest Alabama point allowance since the invention of the Model T.

It’s also fair to say the response to a humbling rivalry loss was sufficient in the first 59:59 Saturday night. This was a Mississippi State passing offense that entered the night No. 9 in the nation averaging 333.0 yards a game. It finished with 231 as Rogers completed 30 of 60 throws for all 231 of the Bulldog passing yards.

Playing without three injured starters/rotation players, Alabama held Mississippi State to a 7-for-22 success rate on third downs and an average of 3.4 yards per play. The 293 total Bulldog yards didn’t begin to approach the 427.6-yard average but that didn’t bring a smile to Hellams’ face.

“It’s all about finishing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what the scoreboard says. To us, the scoreboard is always 0-0 so whenever somebody gets into the end zone, that’s always something that we don’t want to allow. It doesn’t matter if it’s the last play of the game.”

Alabama’s defensive stat sheet read like a phone book with 20 different players recording a tackle. Hellams’ 12 were second only to 13 from pissed off To’o To’o.

This was the long-awaited Eli Ricks starting debut and the LSU transfer delivered. The first of his four pass breakups came on the first snap of the game. By halftime, Mississippi State’s completed passes (11) numbered just one more than Alabama’s passes broken up (10).

The Bulldogs were on pace for its lowest offensive output of the season until getting the ball back with 3:58 to play. Its 15-play, 76-yard, game-ending march didn’t even come against the backups.

Alabama, up 30, had the starting 11 on the field to face an air raid offense whose siren sounded something like the referee’s faulty mic.

Mississippi State coach Mike Leach saw some of the issue after his third loss to the Crimson Tide.

“We’ve got some guys that are afraid of the jersey that says Alabama on it,” he said. “We spent a lot of time frightened of their jerseys. You want to scare some of the guys on our team, put an Alabama jersey on, it’ll scare the hell out of them.”

But instead of folding up and trying next year to score a touchdown, the Bulldog offense went to work. Rogers completed 7 of 11 passes on the final drive while Alabama committed two of its three penalties all night. After being flagged a school record 17 times in Knoxville, that’s probably worth celebrating in the Alabama locker room.

“Yeah, coach harped on it all week and he was ripping us apart,” To’o To’o said. “And that’s one thing that we have to focus on as a team, to be a more disciplined team. Be more locked into the fundamentals that we play with.”

But the shutout wasn’t to be. A Mississippi State offense that didn’t have a play longer than 21 yards all night got a 20-yarder from Rogers in the closing moments to put the Bulldogs at the Alabama 17.

It was a fistfight to the end with everyone’s pride — albeit to different degrees — on the line.

“Every week we want to make a statement,” said Hellams, a safety on the wrong end of a few big plays in Knoxville. “It’s just up to us to live up to the Alabama standard and I feel like we did a great job, for the most part, of living up to the Alabama standard.”

A week after utter embarrassment at the hands of their rival, the Crimson Tide defense helped carry a suddenly uneven Alabama offense. Despite winning by 24, the Tide offense that lit up Tennessee was outgained by Mississippi State, 293-290. That was a yardage season-low by a significant chunk behind the 374 from the Texas game.

That’s what made the final second of Saturday night’s game so weird.

Nobody was even sure what to do after Marks’ crossed the goal line with zeros on the clock. Kick an extra point? The refs had already run for the hills so the handshakes began as Hellams headshake continued.

No shutout tonight, but progress against Alabama’s favorite slump buster from Starkville.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.