Tennessee football: Five takeaways from Vols 31-27 win at South Carolina

Here’s what we learned from the Tennessee football Volunteers’ victory at the Gamecocks.

Freshman Jimmy Holiday recovered a fumbled punt at the end of the game, and Tennessee football was able to run out the clock to escape with a 31-27 win at the South Carolina Gamecocks. It was an ugly season-opening win to kick off Jeremy Pruitt’s third year.

The Vols fell behind early, allowing a touchdown on the opening drive and then muffing a snap on a punt on their first drive. However, the rebounded with a touchdown and a pick-six to go into halftime with a 14-7 lead.

In the second half, a shootout emerged. UT took a 21-7 lead with another touchdown drive to open the third quarter, but South Carolina scored two straight to tie it up. The Vols then responded with a touchdown to go up 28-21, and then the teams traded field goals the rest of the way, South Carolina hitting two and Tennessee football hitting one.

Despite the ugliness of the win, the Vols have now one two straight against Will Muschamp after a seven-game losing streak against him dating back to his Florida Gators days. Getting that monkey of their backs was a big deal on its own.

More importantly, though, UT won what we might call one of its two toss-up games this year, the other being the Kentucky Wildcats. These are games that we determined could go either way. The Vols have three likely or circled wins and five likely or circled losses, so they needed to win both toss-up games to be on pace for 5-5 and have hopes of finishing even better than that.

This win puts them on the right track, and it’s the first season-opening win for Jeremy Pruitt. Next week, they will face the Missouri Tigers at home, while South Carolina visits the Florida Gators. Before looking ahead to that, here are five things we learned about Tennessee football in Columbia, S.C. with their win Saturday night.