John Gibson entered Saturday’s game with mild knee and hamstring injuries. Gibson played, but Missouri decided to start junior college transfer Kenya Dennis.

When South Dakota State deployed its 6-foot-4 and 6-foot-5 receivers to pick on Missouri’s secondary in the middle quarters, mostly it was against sophomore starter Aarion Penton, considered the team’s best cornerback.

Dennis didn’t have a standout game, but he held his own in coverage and contributed a half-sack with Markus Golden. Listed at 6-foot and 200 pounds, he’s physical at the line of scrimmage and gives the secondary a different element.

Dennis didn’t draw much interest out of Leland (Miss.) High School, a Class 2A program, but became an honorable-mention junior college All-America corner at Hinds (Miss.) Community College. Auburn, Arkansas and Southern Miss offered him scholarships, but Mississippi State, which showed interest when Dennis was in high school, did not.

Missouri lost both its starting cornerbacks and the Golden Eagles were coming off a one-win season, so Dennis decided to leave the Magnolia State. He enrolled in Columbia during the spring semester, made some plays during the fall scrimmages and started his first Division I game Saturday, albeit against an FCS opponent.

“It was amazing, just a great feeling for me,” Dennis said, according to the Kansas City Star. “I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life before. … It really hasn’t even hit me yet, but I’m blessed. God blessed me with the chance to play at an SEC school. I just took the chance and ran with it.”

Gibson and Penton remain the starting cornerbacks on the depth chart. In fact, Dennis and junior David Johnson flipped spots this week, with Dennis now backing up Penton.

“He made some plays,” Missouri cornerbacks coach Cornell Ford said, according to The Star. “He’s still got a lot of room for improvement, but I think he’s on the right track. He’s kind of what we thought he would be.”

One of the biggest questions headed into the 2014 season wasn’t whether the defense could replace players like Michael Sam, Kony Ealy and E.J. Gaines, but whether the new backups could provide the same strength of depth.

No one expects Dennis to make the kind of impact off the bench that, say, Golden made at defensive end last season. But he’s shown enough in practice and in Saturday’s game that the coaches will trust him should one of the starters get injured.

Dennis has the kind of strength that could prove useful when he tries to jam SEC receivers at the line of scrimmage.

“You walk in the door and it’s like, ‘Holy smokes, look at this guy,'” Ford said, according to the Columbia Tribune. “And honestly, I wasn’t sure if he was going to play corner. But I knew that as a defensive back, having that kind of size in the secondary is a plus.”

To relay one last Ford quote from The Star: “All of our other guys aren’t quite as tall or as strong or as physical, so we needed a guy with that kind of presence on the defense at the corner position … (Dennis) is probably our most physical guy.”