The Tennessee Volunteers are far from perfect heading into the final month of college football’s regular season, but they’re hardly hurting.
Their opponent this week is hurting.
Kentucky produced the Southeastern Conference’s biggest road upset of the season so far with its 20-17 downing of Ole Miss in Oxford on Sept. 28, but Mark Stoops and the Wildcats have since lost to Vanderbilt, Florida and Auburn. They have fallen the past two weeks to the Gators and Tigers by the combined score of 72-30, which includes a grisly 35-7 tally after halftime of those games.
“It’s a tough league, and we have to man up,” Stoops said Saturday night in a news conference. “There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, and our players know that. They’ve got to get back to work. This is on me. I’ve got to do a better job.
“You can’t point fingers. You’ve got to find solutions. It’s very frustrating.”