KNOXVILLE - After their first two weeks of this college football season, the Tennessee Volunteers needed Saturday afternoon's result.
The Vols opened with a listless effort in a surprising 38-30 loss to Georgia State. A week later they found a way to lose a game against BYU in painful fashion, 29-26 in double overtime.
So with frustration mounting upon realizing how close they had been to 2-0, the Vols took some of those emotions out on the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, scoring 21 points in the first seven minutes against the Mocs, building a 38-0 lead by halftime and cruising to a 45-0 win over their Football Championship Subdivision visitors at Neyland Stadium.
The Vols ran for 197 yards in their second consecutive solid rushing performance. Junior quarterback Jarrett Guarantano showed some signs of getting out of his early-season funk, finishing with three touchdown tosses - his most as a Vol - and completing all but one of his eight passes. The defense forced five turnovers, including four interceptions.
Tennessee's special teams were solid, with Ty Chandler returning the opening kickoff 58 yards. Brent Cimaglia kicked a 34-yarder on his only field-goal attempt and made all six extra points, and Tyler Byrd blocked a punt and tipped another, with Brandon Johnson scooping up the blocked punt and returning it for a score.
"It was a good thing," Guarantano said. "I think we came out and executed pretty well. There are obviously things that we need to clean up and fix, but going into this game, we wanted to harp on details and we wanted to harp on toughness. I think we got some of that done, but we're going back to the drawing board. We've got to go check out the tape. Going into next week, we're going to have a tough task and we're going to have to learn from what we just did out there."
The road ahead is exponentially tougher for the Vols, who start Southeastern Conference play this Saturday at No. 9 Florida (3-0, 1-0), which has won 13 of the past 14 meetings against Tennessee. The Gators beat Kentucky 29-21 Saturday night despite playing the fourth quarter without quarterback Feleipe Franks (right leg injury), with coach Dan Mullen saying afterward he expected the three-year starter to be out for the season.
After an open date, Tennessee hosts No. 3 Georgia on Oct. 5 and Mississippi State the week after that before going to No. 2 Alabama. Tennessee then hosts South Carolina before taking a brief break from SEC play with its Nov. 2 homecoming game against the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
So it's easy to see why a little positive momentum was necessary, with second-year Vols coach Jeremy Pruitt noting in his postgame press conference Saturday that it's been tough sledding for the program lately.
"When you look at the makeup of the guys on our football team, in the last three seasons, today was the 10th win," Pruitt said. "The guys that have been here for three and four years have not had a lot of success, and they need it. We have a lot of guys that are young guys in our locker room that are used to winning. Maybe some of our older guys were used to it when they were in high school.
"The one thing that you never want to get to is to a place where not winning doesn't bother you. It bothers me. I can't sleep at night, and I probably make everyone in our building miserable because of it. I know I do at home, but we have to get our players to a point where that's the way they are, and I think we have a lot of them in our program that are that way."
The Vols are 10-17 since the start of the 2017 season, a record made even worse considering they won three of their first four games to start that schedule. Tennessee is the worst team in the SEC East since then and the second-worst team in the conference, with Arkansas winning only one league game in the past two seasons.
So while it may not have come against SEC competition, after a four-game losing streak dating to last season, a shutout victory was exactly what the Vols needed.
"Wonderful," Byrd responded when asked about the mood in the locker room. "Hopefully we take it and say, 'This is how it feels to win,' and we can build on that momentum and try to just keep going and fight the good fight each and every week."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.