KNOXVILLE - Tennessee football players and coaches undoubtedly wish they'd spent Sunday breaking down video of Alabama and preparing for a meeting with the Crimson Tide in this week's Southeastern Conference championship game.
That was not the case, obviously.
But it doesn't mean this has been a lost year for the Volunteers, who completed an 8-4 regular season Saturday with their fifth win in a row, a 53-28 dispatching of Vanderbilt.
Despite achieving the program's best win total - with a bowl game still ahead - since going 10-4 in 2007, the Vols may find it hard to watch Florida play Alabama at the Georgia Dome on Saturday, especially given what happened prior to Tennessee's finishing flourish.
"I wouldn't say (there's) a salty taste," cornerback Cameron Sutton said after Saturday's win. "That's the thing about the game of football. You see things after the game that you didn't see throughout the game or the course of those games. We learned from the mistakes. We put ourselves in good situations to be where we are right now.
"We know that a couple more plays, we'd win the majority of those games or the rest of those four games. We can't dwell on that, and we didn't dwell on that for the rest of the year, and we are where we are now."
One of the most hyped teams in the country all offseason, Tennessee faced elevated expectations in 2015. There's still one more chance to put a stamp on the season, but it's fair now to assess whether the Vols met or exceeded those expectations.
Tennessee finished second in the SEC East, which is where it was picked to finish at the league's media days in July. Most projected the Vols to win eight or nine games, and in August an 8-4 finish would have been viewed as a good season.
And that's without the Vols knowing what they would have to go through to get there.
Tennessee lost its most experienced offensive lineman (Marcus Jackson) and a potential breakout player on defense (Rashaan Gaulden) in the preseason and got five quarters out of linebacker Curt Maggitt before he was lost for the season.
Pig Howard, Jason Croom and Marquez North combined for just six receptions.
The Vols didn't have Jashon Robertson - one of their best offensive linemen - for multiple games, lost promising freshmen defensive linemen Shy Tuttle and Kyle Phillips midway through the season and were decimated by injuries at receiver, with North and freshmen Jauan Jennings and Preston Williams missing multiple games.
But it's hard not to talk about what could have been.
The Vols led eventual Big 12 champion Oklahoma 17-3 midway through the fourth quarter and were a dropped touchdown, one defensive stand or some first downs on offense from beating the Sooners, who were third in the most recent College Football Playoff rankings.
Tennessee blew its first win at Florida since 2003 and cost itself a trip to the SEC title game because of some coaching mistakes, the inability to get a single fourth-down stop, a last-minute drive mismanaged by the Vols and the officials, and a narrowly missed field goal at the horn.
A missed field goal, red-zone fumble and punt-return touchdown negated by a penalty marred the Vols' loss to Arkansas, and Alabama answered Tennessee's late score in Tuscaloosa with a clutch drive of its own.
"We were just a few plays away," defensive end Derek Barnett said.
Those missed chances may be the story of Tennessee's season, but the Vols, who beat a pair of nine-win teams - Bowling Green and Georgia - used it as fuel to finish strong.
"There's no quit in us," Sutton said. "Our hunger grows more week in and week out. Adversity's going to hit a team, and it hit us early. We put it on the leaders of the team to step up and embrace it and make a change. We did that. We came together."
Most importantly, this season is one that third-year coach Butch Jones and his staff can sell when they hit the recruiting trail this week. They can sell momentum, how the Vols are continuing to build and how close the program is to bigger things. They can sell continuity and stability amid multiple coaching changes, including the ones in Tennessee's own division.
"We have a lot of momentum," Jones said after improving his record at Tennessee to 20-17. "I believe we're one of the best teams in the country. And our players believe that. There's a lot of positive energy surrounding our program, and that's a tribute to our players, our staff and their work ethic."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.