FAYETTEVILLE — Tennessee’s trip to Fayetteville this year featured a first half to remember and a third quarter that will be hard to forget.
Arkansas scored 24 unanswered points after halftime and defeated the Volunteers 24-13 on Saturday at Reynolds Razorback Stadium.
The Razorbacks (3-3) rallied from a 13-0 deficit at halftime.
“When you look at this game, first of all you have to give credit to Arkansas,” Tennessee coach Jeremy Pruitt said. “They really outplayed us in the second half; outscored us and, in fact, shut us out in the second half.
“So that is not a very good job there. We have got to do a much better job coming out at halftime.”
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It was the fourth straight loss for Tennessee (2-4), which has been outscored 61-7 in the third quarter during that span.
The four-game skid comes after an eight-game win streak that dated to last season and was the longest in the FBS at the time.
“I just talked to them,” Pruitt said. “I told them that I am not discouraged, I’m not disappointed with where we are at. I am pissed off obviously, but it is like I told the players, I have been a part of really good programs and I know how to get there.
“We have to learn how to play at a higher level….It is just the execution part. It is not where we want it at and that’s my fault. It is not the players' fault. We have got to work hard to get them there and the guys understand that.
“I really like the character of the people in that room, but we have got to execute at a higher level if we want to finish how we want to finish.”
Arkansas forced Tennessee to go three-and-out on its first six possessions of the second half and gave up 16 yards of total offense in the third quarter.
“It seems to me that we have had more penalties in the third quarter, more turnovers in the third quarter,” Pruitt said.
“We tend to shoot ourselves in the foot there and we have done that plenty of time.”
Arkansas linebacker Bumper Pool finished with a game-high 14 tackles, and Grant Morgan and Jalen Catalon had 12 each. The Razorbacks had a 413-292 advantage in total offense.
“If you look at this game, there are a lot of things that we have got to do, obviously, to correct,” Pruitt said. “The first thing is we have got to play a lot cleaner game."
Vols tailback Eric Gray finished with 31 carries for 123 yards, but was limited to just 27 yards in the second half.
“They did make adjustments on defense, but it wasn’t anything that we hadn’t seen before,” Gray said. “They just started slanting to the back more and kind of blitzing a little bit.
“We have just got to learn how to strain. That is the key to it. We have to do it in practice. You can’t just start doing that on Saturdays. You can’t just flip a switch on Saturday…We just have to learn how to finish.”
Pruitt thought the Vols could have led by more than 13 points at halftime.
“Offensively, in the first half we controlled the ball and were knocking them off, but there were two or three plays in the first half where we don’t do very well, whether it is not blocking the right guy or not finishing where we end up having to kick field goals," Pruitt said.
“You have got to score touchdowns when we get down there close and we didn’t do that.”
He also noted that Arkansas fumbled four times, but didn't lose any.
“I thought the kids fought trying to finish, but there were four balls on the ground and we didn’t get none of them,” Pruitt said. “They also had two pass plays where they got like 70 yards each and that really hurt us.”
Tennessee had a chance to cut its deficit to 24-16 late in the fourth quarter, but chose to not kick a field goal. The Vols failed on a fourth-down attempt.
“We wasn’t close enough, I didn’t feel like,” Pruitt said. “We felt like we had a good play there and we just didn’t get it done.”
Pruitt hopes his team can bounce back quickly.
“They know what it takes to execute and we have done it at times, but we have not done it consistently the entire year,” Pruitt said. “That is something that we obviously have to get to if we hope to beat people in our league.”