| ATHENS, Ga. — Tennessee went from the outhouse to the penthouse in a week.
After six days of hearing about how Georgia might when a national championship and the Vols might be headed to another Peach Bowl, the Vols did take a major stride toward another date in the Georgia Dome.
But Saturday’s 19-14 upset of third-ranked Georgia has the Vols thinking SEC championship instead of Peach Bowl. The Vols, now 4-1 overall and 2-1 in the SEC, have their own destiny firmly in their hands. With wins against Florida and Georgia, Tennessee’s lone league hurdle now should be an Oct. 30 visit to South Carolina.
The other league games are visits to Vanderbilt and Ole Miss home dates with Kentucky and Alabama.
But the Vols locker room had a look-what-happened-here tone when questions about their favorable schedule came up. Some conceded that they thought Georgia would be ripe Saturday, what with its 45-16 dismantling of defending national champion Louisiana State last week coming on the same day that the Vols lost 34-10 at home against Auburn.
“I really thought there was a possibility that it could happen like this,” Tennessee offensive coordinator Randy Sanders said. “It’s tough to play big games back-to-back. And I think sometimes it’s tougher to play big games back-to-back at home than it is to play one at home and one on the road. Georgia has a tremendous football team.
“With us getting beat 34-10 and them winning 45-16 it’s pretty easy to expect them to come out here and roll over us. But our kids didn’t think that was going to be the case.”
In fact, Tennessee players reiterated that, regardless of whether Georgia showed up or not, they thought they could beat Georgia.
“We knew, as bad as the score looked against Auburn, that it was really not that bad,” said Jason Respert, a fifth-year senior from Warner Robbins, Ga. “I mean we had six turnovers and a blocked punt against Auburn. You’re not going to beat a community college from Warner Robbins if you do that.”
Georgia will now spend a week grimacing at self-inflicted wounds. The Bulldogs (4-1, 2-1) committed seven of their 12 penalties in the first half. Georgia had one penalty against LSU.
The Bulldogs extended Tennessee drives with penalties, including a 15-yarder for having too many men on the field, and had more procedure-type penalties than the Vols, who had freshman quarterback Erik Ainge dealing with crowd noise for the first time in his career.
Tennessee was also playing musical chairs on the offensive line. Arron Sears, Michael Munoz, Albert Toeaina and Cody Douglas were all unavailable at various points.
But the Vols front fired off in sync in the deafening noise, and helped Gerald Riggs, Jr., get 102 rushing yards against an excellent defense.
“Tennessee did play-action well and they ran the ball well,” said Georgia two-time All-American defensive lineman David Pollack. “Erik Ainge played well.”
Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer never looked prouder.
“We are really, really happy right now,” Fulmer said. “We are a good football team and this was good old-fashioned SEC football game today. Gerald Riggs stepped it up big today.”
So did Georgians Derrick Tinsley, Respert and Jason Hall. Tinsley (Marietta) caught a 39-yard pass on third-and-11 on Tennessee’s first drive, which ended in a 22-yard TD pass to Bret Smith.
Tinsley, who caught a TD pass and threw another to Jason Witten on a halfback-option in the Vols 18-13 loss here two years ago, also caught three-yard pass on fourth-and-two on Tennessee’s final touchdown drive.
Tinsley wasn’t shown much interest by Georgia under previous coach Jim Donnan, and was happy to end his career by finally beating his native state.
“I’m so happy to finally beat them,” Tinsley said. “This was a better win than Miami last year because it’s a conference win and we control our own destiny in the SEC East. We’ve just got to make sure we continue to practice and prepare the way we did for this game.
“It’s easy to look ahead but we’re not going to do that. It is nice though to know that we don’t have to depend on anybody else to beat Florida or Georgia.”
Another Marietta product, Tennessee junior defensive end Jason Hall, believed the Vols could bat some balls, knock Georgia quarterback David Greene down and destroy his need for rhythm.
“Their a rhythm offense,” said Hall, who had two sacks and three tackles for loss among his seven stops and also batted a ball down. “It might have been my best game but I wasn’t in keeping statistics. I just wanted to beat Georgia.”
GO VOLS....
GO BIG ORANGE!!!!!!!!
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