What Josh Heupel said about Tennessee-Kentucky on the SEC Coaches Teleconference

What head coach Josh Heupel said on the SEC Coaches Teleconference on Wednesday as No. 17 Tennessee prepares to go to Kentucky for Saturday night’s 7:45 p.m. Eastern Time start on SEC Network at Kroger Field in Lexington:

Opening Statement 

“Everybody understands what this game is. It’s a border game. Historically, it has been a trophy game. It’s been one that has always been played really close. Games decided in the fourth quarter. And so you look at UK and their football team, taking Texas to overtime last week with an opportunity to win the game. They’ve played extremely well on defense and offensively, their young quarterback continues to get better. And we’ve had a really good start to the week, but the details, the preparation are going to matter. And then you got to play with a great, competitive spirit and play extremely physical against this group. It’s always one of those games.”

What impressed him about Kentucky’s performance against Texas

“Well, I think the young quarterback continues to get better. And they got a veteran offensive line. You look at the stat line from the game, the stats show that they won the game in every way, pretty much doubling up the yardage of their opponent. And I think you look at Kentucky, they’ve played a really difficult schedule, and everyone does inside of this league, but they played a really tough schedule and have been close. I think offensively they continue to get better. Defensively, it’s a typical Kentucky defense in that they’re extremely big up front and play physical and hard and multiple in what they do on the back end. The secondary is a bunch of guys that we’ve played before. So it’s going to be a great test.”

Tennessee’s clean up of the loss at Alabama 

“Yeah, for us, our players are back in the building on Monday. As a staff, you watch it early Sunday and then move on. And everybody in the program was obviously disappointed with the outcome of the game. A lot of things that we have an opportunity to correct and some self-inflicted wounds. And as a team, that’s what you show, or what I show is the things that we control and how it’s got a chance to change the way the game’s played. And at the same time, really important to recognize a lot of the positives from the game, too — that’s individually and collectively as a unit. Ultimately you want to win that game, and the differences are in the details. So we just got to continue to grow. And our guys have had a great mindset here in the early part of this week. And, certainly we understand what it means to go up to Kentucky and the way that you have to play to win up there.”

The biggest positive he took away from Tennessee’s loss at Alabama 

“I think one of them just, for us obviously, the end of the first half, momentum swings in a big way, and you head into the locker room and you have a choice whether you’re going to be willing to come out and compete in the second half. And the way we started, three and out on defense, score on offense, turnover on defense. That next sequence offensively, we shoot ourselves in the foot. But I just think the way they continued to fight and compete throughout the football game. And there’s multiple times in the game where you got a chance to shrink that thing to at one-possession game. And a 14-point turnaround at the end of the half and some of the things that we did to ourselves early in the football game, it’s a credit to the guys of how they just continue to go play the next play. So I think that’s one really good takeaway from that football game.”

Where the Kentucky series compares to Tennessee’s rivalry games

“I think that’s really one of the unique things here. Different generations of fans have a different game that maybe is what they view as the most critical rivalry game. And I think that makes it fun for us inside of this program throughout the course of the year, the history of these games and the rivalries and what it means to everybody that’s in our program, but been through our program and our fanbase too. Kentucky being a border state and fans being close by. Our fanbase always travels really well, but you can feel what this means to everybody, certainly during the course of the week, but definitely on game day too.”