BATON ROUGE, La. — The Tennessee Volunteers showed up at Tiger Stadium wearing grey and left LSU’s home awash in orange.
Absolutely smoking in their “Smokey Grey” uniforms, the No. 8 Vols made their first trip to Louisiana since 2010 a memorable one Saturday afternoon by thrashing the No. 25 Tigers 40-13 before an announced sellout of 102,321 stunned and sun-splashed fans. Tennessee easily produced its most comprehensive and resounding performance of the Josh Heupel era, collecting the program’s most lopsided road victory over a ranked opponent since thumping No. 12 Alabama 41-14 at Birmingham’s Legion Field in 1995.
“The work and the effort and the preparation that our players have put in is what led to this, and it’s our staff, too,” Heupel said after Tennessee improved to 5-0 for the first since 2016. “They do a great job with their consistency and giving our players a great plan, but I’ve said before that we’re a long way away from playing our best football, and I still say that today.
“There is a lot we can get better at, and we’ll need to do that next week, but the thing that I love about this program is that everybody comes to compete every single day and they enjoy doing that together.”
Next week, of course, is a visit from Alabama, the longtime rival Tennessee has yet to defeat under 16th-year Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban.