Midweek Updates

Photo Credit: Andrew Ferguson/Tennessee Athletics

The Vols are just 3 days away from their road matchup with Auburn. In addition to a brief preview of the game, we look some of Jeremy Pruitt's quotes from his Monday press conference.

Vols Have a Great Opportunity At Auburn

No. 21 Auburn hosts the Vols at noon eastern on Saturday. The Tigers have decided to "stripe" their stadium for this game, alternating orange and blue for each section. Basically, it is similar to Tennessee's "Checker Neyland", but not nearly as cool. As for the game itself, 69% of those who responded to our weekly Twitter Poll said that if the Vols can defeat Auburn, they will reach a bowl game this season. Currently, the Tigers are 15.5-point favorites, but their unimpressive 24-13 win over Southern Miss and a 23-9 loss to Mississippi State in consecutive weeks give Vol fans hope of pulling off the upset. Winning this game would do wonders for the rebuilding of the program. Heading into the season, I did not even consider beating a ranked team a possibility, especially the road test at Auburn. Still, with the way that Tennessee fought against Georgia and two lackluster performances from Auburn, not to mention the fact that kickoff is set for 11:00 local time, the Vols have a solid chance of coming back to Knoxville with the win.

Pruitt's Monday Press Conference

Coach Pruitt began Auburn week with this statement, "We had a really good off week last week. We had an good opportunity to get back to a lot of fundamentals which was good for a lot of our guys. I was thinking about it over the weekend, I think there's probably ten guys that have started for us at some point in time this season that weren't here during the spring and there's probably another 8 to 10 guys that play a lot that weren't here. It was good to go back and get some fundamental work and go back to some foundations on both sides of the ball and in the kicking game. Unfortunately, we did lose a player for a few weeks. Trevon Flowers dove to intercept the ball the other day and broke his collar bone, but he's had surgery and he'll be back in a few weeks. It's unfortunate for him because he really had improved in the last two or three weeks and had a great off week this past week, so we'll be without him moving forward." The Vols seem to be moving in the right direction each week, so that's a positive, but the injury to Flowers is disappointing. It seems as if he may be able to return this season, fortunately.

In regards to Jarrett Guarantano's performance thus far, Pruitt commented, "Jarrett is just like everybody else on our football team. He's had bright spots just like a lot of guys. I think we're looking for consistency with all of our players. If you look at this past weekend, the teams that had success—I'm sitting there flipping the channels, just watching different teams play—folks that have experience and can do it over and over again the right way seem to have success. That's what we're looking for with all of our players." Consistency is the one word that can describe what needs to take place in order for Pruitt to bring Tennessee back to relevance. In practices and in games, consistency among the team as a whole is the key element. Guarantano should continue to step up as a leader this season.