The Tennessee Volunteers gave away a game they probably should have won in Week 2, dropping a double-overtime contest to No. 19 Oklahoma, 31-24.

The game was a tale of two defensive halves, with Tennessee dominating for the first three quarters. The loss was the biggest lead ever coughed away by a Volunteers team at Neyland Stadium. Afterward, Tennessee head coach had these thoughts on his 1-1 Volunteers.

Head coach Butch Jones kept his comments brief after the game:

“You have to learn from it, you know I’m exceptionally proud of them. We talk about ‘my all,’ they gave their all and we came up a little bit short and that’s competition. So what do you do? You roll your sleeves up, you come back at it tomorrow and you work and you let this drive you, you let this fuel you.

“I told them, never lose this feeling. The day you don’t feel like coming to practice or you don’t feel like working hard, think about how you feel right now. And we have a group of kids that take great pride in their performance. They give us everything they have and I love them and I’m proud of them. They came up short, but they laid it on the line. They played hard and made one more play than we did.”

On the offense’s woes

“You have to take advantage of your field position. It’s all about negative plays. You can’t have pre-snap penalties, and you can have negative plays and too many times we were second-and-15, first-and-1 and that’s really, really hard to overcome against a talented defense.”

On Curt Maggitt’s injury

“Any time you lose a player of Curt Maggitt’s magnitude you’re going to be affected a little bit. He brings so much to the table from an energy standpoint, from a competitive standpoint, but also from an experience standpoint, as well.”

On kicking a 19-yard field goal on fourth-and-one on the Oklahoma one-yard line

“You don’t want all or nothing plays at the beginning of the game, we just felt we need to get on the ball, get some confidence and get some points.”

On the Oklahoma defense in the second half

“They did pretty much the same things, maybe brought a little more pressure, we have to do a better job of handling things. Agains, that’s a talented defense. I think Jalen Hurd is the first back to rush for more than 100 yards against them since 2013, I believe. They’re very quick, they’re very athletic, they’re very stout. They’re everything we though they were coming into the game.”

And a final thought from Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops…