Opening statement:

“The outcome of the last game was not what we were looking for. There’s a lot of bright spots that we can build off of, especially offensively. We ran the ball a little better last week. We converted some on third down, but if you look at us, one time we had way too many penalties that created negative plays and negative yards. We had one in the red area that knocked us out of third-and-10, and we had to run the ball and kick a field goal. There are a lot of positives that we can build off of. Defensively, we didn’t stop the run and we didn’t create many negative plays. We gave up some explosive plays, we have to eliminate that. It’s interesting when you watch the first 24 plays versus the last 30 plays in the game. The difference when it comes from the defensive standpoint, is the production, so we have to improve there. The kicking game – we have to do better on kickoff cover, play with a lot more speed on the kickoff cover. We have to get some guys that do a little better job of going hand-to-hand and not give up one-for-ones down there. Our kickers and snappers have done a really good job, they’ve done a really good job all year. There’s lots of lessons that we can learn, and we’ve got to take them and move forward. I thought that last week we practiced really well, and I think it showed in the game and how we performed, but we have to be able to finish and find ways to win games like that.

“We’ve got a really good opponent this week in Charlotte. Their coaching staff has a ton of experience. They’re very well coached, offensively and defensively. They eliminate the run in the run game. They get lots of turnovers. They give you multiple looks offensively and then run the football. I know they’ve had an injury at quarterback, but they’ve got a guy that has experience. The guys are well coached in the special teams. We’ve got to focus on us and try to improve, I think when we do that it shows up on Saturdays. Then we have to take it to the game and we have to do a good job of finishing in the game.”

On how he would assess his game management in the final quarter against South Carolina:
“I think based off of the way the game was going, I would have done everything the exact same way.”

On what he saw on film that stood out from last week’s game:
“They did a really good job offensively. They gave us a lot of looks that we hadn’t seen. They got in what we call silver personnel, two tight ends, two wide receivers and a running back. It opened up some of the formations and moved some of the guys around. It’s not a lot of what they’ve done, and they did a really good job. We didn’t fit some runs up the correct way. There was a couple plays in the game particularly – you have the two minute before the half, which is probably the most important part of the first half, was the last two minutes. We put a great drive together, then we get a penalty, an undisciplined penalty. We gave them good field position and they move the ball down and convert one third down, pop a run down to the goal line and we turn a guy lose when we’re fixing to sack a guy. In the start of the second half we put a really good drive together. We went down there and scored. Then they bounced back and did some things that they hadn’t done in the first half. They went down and scored and from there we gave up a big pass play that got the ball down to the one- or two-yard line. We’ve got to make them earn it.”

On if early signing day puts a strain on the staff:
“No, I don’t think so. If you’re not recruiting every day then you’re probably not going to be a good recruiter, so we’ve got to be good recruiters regardless of when the signing date is. I think our guys know that.”

On kicker Brent Cimaglia’s range:
“You always get the kicker’s range in the pregame and going the other way it was at the 35-yard line and going to our tunnel was the 30. We were at the 35, and we knew the wind had died down a little bit, but at that point in the game we were either going to go for it or we were going to kick a field goal. We felt like we were a little bit out of his range. The play before we dropped a pass. We would have had the ball on 4th and 1 on the 30- or 29-yard line, and we would be in his range. We understood that, and we called a play to gain to make sure we could possibly make the first down or possibly be in a fourth and short to have choices, and we didn’t execute there, especially on the next down.”

On the controversial non-fumble call at the goal line in the third quarter:
“Well it was definitely a fumble. I saw that, but unfortunately for the officials, they only have certain angles they can see, and from their angles they didn’t see that. You can look at it on our film, it’s obviously a fumble. It was disappointing for me because I could see it on the sideline, but they have a tough job to do, just like we have a tough job to do, and those guys are doing the best they can, and they have to take what they have to work with it. It is an unfortunate circumstance, but the officials had nothing to do with us getting nine penalties, they had nothing to do with us losing the battle at the line of scrimmage, so that’s really only one small part of the game.”

On the play of the offensive against South Carolina:
“I think we did a good job offensively giving them different looks. We have been pretty multiple the last three games if you go back to the Auburn game, Alabama and this game. We have presented a lot of problems for those defenses just being able to line up formation wise, giving them different looks, and different personnel. One thing we didn’t do was create a lot of explosive plays. We only had three explosive plays. Far and away this was our best output offensively. We weren’t just relying on explosive plays, but we need to create more, and we had opportunities to do that, but we had breakdowns in protection. A couple of times I didn’t feel like we threw the ball to the right side of the field, and then we had a drop. The plays were there to be made from the explosive standpoint, but I thought from an execution [standpoint] and kind of getting more plays right, that was far and away our best game offensively. We didn’t turn the ball over, [and] converted third downs. We just killed ourselves with penalties.”

On the offense being multiple and the play of Marcus Tatum at left tackle:
“You can be multiple a couple of different ways. You can have lots of playmakers and get them the ball in different scenarios, or you can give them different things formational wise, and maybe give them things that they don’t think they will get and create edges that way. I think our staff has done a good job with that. Our last three teams we’ve played we have been very familiar with. Defensively wise, we all kind of come from the same background, so that’s helped because you kind of know what you’re going to get a little bit just from our standpoint, we’re all coming from the same defensive tree. As far as Marcus Tatum, Marcus is a smart guy. He played hard for a guy that hasn’t been playing left tackle – and I don’t know if he has ever played left tackle – but I’m sure there are things he can improve on, and he will.”

On Saturday’s penalties and how he is addressing them:
“For one, some of them are unforced, lack of judgement. We can definitely fix that. I think a lot of the penalties on Saturday were going on the clap and not hearing the cadence, so when you’re playing on the road, we’ve got to do a better job of communicating, knowing when its coming. I think getting in and out of the huddle faster, so the offensive linemen are not having to make calls up there as the play clock’s going down, I think that would help. And that goes a bunch of different ways. That can go from hustling back to the ball. I think right now, based off of where we’re at offensively, we operate much better out of a huddle because we’ve had so many guys turn over, and some of that’s hustling back to the ball, some of that’s breaking out of the huddle, some of it’s as simple as we hold three yards from the ball, there’s four or five times in the game, somehow we huddle 8-10 yards from the ball. Some of it’s the quarterback standing right next to the huddle, so there’s not much movement for him getting the signal, some of it might be him getting the play in faster, but all of these things would help speed up the fact that we’re not making calls. The o-line is trying to ID the MIKE or the front, and I think would help in the communication of a simple thing is a clap, so we’ve got to do that.”

On what it is about the SEC that makes it difficult for true freshmen to come in and play right away:
“It’s probably no different in any conference. If you’re going to play young guys, they’ve got to be mature, they’ve got to know how to prepare. Lots of times the guys can start off really well early, but because of the grind of the season, the academic part, sometimes sustaining throughout the year [is difficult], but if you look at it all over the country, there’s teams that played lots of freshmen. Probably more times than not the teams that have experience, it probably shows on Saturday. There’s nothing more valuable that you can get than just going out there and playing and just getting used to it.”

On the fumble issue and why he didn’t challenge it:
“Well there’s no more coaches’ challenges anymore. Every play is reviewed by the officials, so they look at everything from targeting to the spots, turnovers, but they’re limited to which views they have from the cameras. For us, we film from a sideline view, an end zone view, and from our sideline view, you can’t see anything, but definitely from the end zone it’s obvious. Those guys are doing the best they can do, and they’ve got to go with what they’ve got. It would probably make a whole lot of sense in the SEC, with as much money as we’ve got, to get end zone cameras. That was a big play in the game, and it’s unfortunate that it happened that way, but we made plenty of errors in the game, and you’ve got to give South Carolina credit for creating a lot of those issues, and we’ve got to get where we don’t make those errors.”

On the challenges that Charlotte presents this week:
“They’re very well coached. If you look at their coaching staff, there’s tons of experience on the staff, on offense and defense. Offensively, they give you multiple looks, they’re committed to running the football. They went for it nine or 10 times already this year on fourth down. Defensively, they stop the run, they create negative plays, they get turnovers, and when you watch them on special teams they play with speed. They’ve got good players and they’re very well coached. For us, every week we’ve tried to focus on us, because we feel like if we can just fix us, that’s what we can control. That’s what we’re going to go back and try to do this week.”

On what he like about Jarrett Guarantano’s performance:
“I’ve said all along, Jarrett’s a tough guy. He made some really good throws and made some really good decisions. I think we played 73 offensive snaps and probably 65 of those he played extremely well. There were probably three throws that he would’ve liked to have had back. There were probably five decisions, whether it was a check or with protection or maybe starting on the wrong side of the field, that he was wrong on. I thought he showed a lot of courage, played really hard and was a really good leader for our team. We just need to fix those other plays, and he can do that. We ask him to do a lot of things, which, I think it helps our offense. He gets us in the right plays in the run game, we can make checks from run to pass, he can change protections. There’s a lot of demand on him and he can handle it. There’s just a few things that we got to fix from this past week.”

On getting the ball in Carlin Flis-aime’s hands against South Carolina:
“Carlin can run, but he’s not going to learn the offense in three days just like Jeremy (Banks) won’t learn the defense. We just found a couple of special plays that we felt fit his skill set and kind of went with them. He’ll obviously get more reps this week and probably have a bigger role.”

On how much responsibility Jarrett Guarantano takes and how much the offensive line takes for him being hit:
“Well when you look at it, you can seven-man protect, you can eight-man protect, you can do five-out, empty, there’s a bunch of different ways you can do it. The closer you get everybody, there’s more guys that can actually come, so when you’re doing five-outs it’s on the quarterback to make sure you’re either going to be hot or you’ve got to be able to slide the protection. He got flushed a few times the other day in eight-man protection. I don’t know what the percentage would be.”

On the game plan for quarterbacks against South Carolina:
“We repped both guys and they actually took the same amount of reps this week. It was just going to be a game-time decision. One thing I never like to do is tell a kid something that I can’t follow through with, so the games that we’ve decided we’re going to play Keller (Chryst), I’ve told him. I’m not going to tell you what series it’s going to be, because I don’t want to tell you fourth series and we’re getting the ball on the minus-1-yard line and we’ve changed quarterbacks, so we’ve tried to be consistent with our message and I think our players respect that. I didn’t go into the game and say, ‘Hey, Keller you’re going to play’. Another part of that is that you don’t want the other guy looking over his shoulder, you want him to play with confidence. That’s the one thing to me about Keller Chryst that I respect so much, is he’s come here and been a phenomenal teammate and our players rally around him. I’ve seen him and Jarrett have really worked well together and he can do anything in our game plan.”

-UT Athletics

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Tennessee fell to South Carolina on Saturday night as the Gamecocks rallied to take a late, 27-24 lead at Williams-Brice Stadium.

With the loss, Tennessee holds a 3-5 (1-4 SEC) record while the Gamecocks move to 4-3 (3-3 SEC).

The Vols were led by redshirt sophomore quarterback Jarrett Guarantano who completed 27-of-39 passes for 207 yards and two touchdowns. Sophomore running back Tim Jordan led the ground attack with 12 attempts for 62 yards while junior wide receiver Marquez Callaway had nine receptions for 86 yards to lead the receiving corps.

Defensively, junior Nigel Warrior ranked first on the team with nine tackles while redshirt senior Todd Kelly Jr., redshirt junior Darrin Kirkland Jr. and senior Kyle Phillips each tallied six for the Vols.

South Carolina’s Jake Bentley threw for 152 yards (11-of-16) and one touchdown in the outing.

Tennessee converted 5-of-7 third downs in the first half, including four in its second drive of the second quarter. Guarantano rushed for 11 yards, sophomore running back Ty Chandler had a four-yard reception and Callaway notched catches of 16 and 12 yards. Overall, UT finished 11-of-16 on third downs.

The Vols and Gamecocks traded punts to start the game before Tennessee’s defense came up big in the third drive of the first quarter. South Carolina’s Bentley attempted a pass over the middle that was tipped by junior linebacker Daniel Bituli to senior defensive lineman Shy Tuttle for an interception. UT proceeded to use six plays and ran 4:52 off the clock as Guarantano connected with redshirt junior tight end Eli Wolf for a five-yard touchdown.

The Big Orange then limited USC to a field goal inside the red zone. Tennessee made four stops inside the five-yard line, holding the Gamecocks at the UT2. The Vols ended the first quarter with a 27-yard kickoff return by Chandler followed by a seven-yard run from Jordan.

In the second, defensive linemen Phillips and Alexis Johnson Jr. forced South Carolina to punt, sacking Bentley for an eight-yard loss. The Vols capitalized on the opportunity to extend their lead and scored their second touchdown of the night, a six-yard pass from Guarantano to redshirt junior wide receiver Jauan Jennings. Prior to the score, Tennessee converted four third downs to keep the drive alive.

South Carolina found the end zone for the first time in the game on an eight-play, 60-yard drive with 49 seconds left in the half. The Gamecocks only came away with six points as Tuttle blocked the PAT attempt.

Tennessee wasted no time getting things started in the third, scoring on its opening drive. Three of UT’s nine plays were 10 yards or more, including Carlin Fils-aime’s rushing touchdown. The 14-yard score was the junior’s first of the season.

USC answered on the following drive as it used seven plays to go 66 yards. The Gamecocks capped the drive with a one-yard rushing touchdown.

The Vols added to their advantage in the third quarter with a season-long field goal from Brent Cimaglia. The sophomore made a 48-yard attempt to finish a 13-play drive to give Tennessee a 24-16 lead.

South Carolina then came back to tie the game at 24-24, traveling 75 yards in four plays and successfully completing a two-point attempt with under two minutes to play in the third.

In the fourth quarter, the Gamecocks took a 27-24 lead after being held to a 24-yard field goal by Tennessee’s defense. USC forced a turnover on downs with less than two minutes to play to take control of the clock and seal its victory.

-UT Athletics