Methods and apparatuses for utilizing a data pending state for cache misses in a system cache. To reduce the size of a miss queue that is searched by subsequent misses, a cache line storage location is allocated in the system cache for a miss and the state of the cache line storage location is set to data pending. A subsequent request that hits to the cache line storage location will detect the data pending state and as a result, the subsequent request will be sent to a replay buffer. When the fill for the original miss comes back from external memory, the state of the cache line storage location is updated to a clean state. Then, the request stored in the replay buffer is reactivated and allowed to complete its access to the cache line storage location.