By: Matt Laws (matt.laws@averyjournal.com)
Avery Journal-Times
KNOXVILLE- The Volunteer defense played well enough for the victory on Saturday in Neyland. Unfortunately, the Tennessee offense didn’t.
The Volunteers fell 19-15 to the Bruins despite having the ball inside the UCLA 2-yard line in the closing minutes and outgaining UCLA in total offense. The Bruins were helped by three interceptions by fifth yea
r senior Jonathon Crompton and also a fumbled snap. The result was the first loss of the Kiffin era.
"It was not a surprise, not a lot of new stuff,” UT head coach Lane Kiffin said. “They just out-executed us. By the stats, you can see 206 yards or something, that's embarrassing. You're not going to win many games when you turn the ball over four times. On the other side of it, we got six fumbles out of it and somehow only got one of them. We've got to do a much better job as a whole team, but especially on offense."
Tennessee struggled on offense all day as they couldn’t seem to get anything going. The Vols managed 208 total offensive yards for the game, but the one yard left on the field proved to be the most costly.
UT had the ball on fourth and two on the UCLA 2-yard line inside the closing minutes and Montario Hardesty was stopped short of the end zone turning the ball over on downs. The Volunteer defense was able to sack UCLA Quarterback Kevin Prince in the endzone for a sack, but could not move the ball on the ensuing possession as UCLA took over on downs after a sack and three incompletions. "I would like to think that any time you have two plays that we should be able to run it with the mentality that we have, and score,” Kiffin said.
“That was very discouraging to see. I should have called a different type of run, but you'd like to think when we have one yard to run to win the game that we could do it." Crompton was 13 of 26 for 93 yards with three interceptions. Hardesty had one touchdown and 89 yards rushing on 26 attempts. Freshman Bryce Brown had 34 yards on 11 carries.
However, it was Crompton’s performance that drew the most scrutiny sparking Kiffin to take part of the blame when aske
d if he considered pulling Crompton. “I thought I didn't do a very good job today of taking care of Jonathan,” Kiffin said. “I tried to stay with the run game a lot of times as you can see with the lopsided ratio of run-to-pass. I think we ran the ball 44 times or something. We've got to do better. I think that showed today, which is my fault for playing some players who haven't practiced enough because of injuries and hoping they would go out there and make plays. That really makes Jonathan suffer. So we didn't do very many good things around him."
The Volunteer defense pounded the Bruins all day, but Kiffin also acknowledged they made some mistakes.
"I think they played really well, considering they had 150 or 160 yards or so,” Kiffin said. “Even after that, we still killed ourselves. I thought Coach [Monte] Kiffin made a number of great calls. We screwed some things up by not doing things right.”
Kiffin also noted that the big game atmosphere may have gotten to the Vols.
“Somehow we got out of whack today in everything that we talked about in letting the emotions of a big game get to us,” Kiffin said. “We got out of character and did things that we don't expect to do."
The Vols travel to Gainesville on Saturday where the Florida Gators will be waiting for them. The game will be televised on CBS with a 3:30 kickoff.
