Tennessee may have lost Saturday night in Neyland Stadium but they didn’t exactly get embarrassed, either. Considering the current state of the Tennessee football program, that’s something to be proud of considering Georgia is a top 5 team.

In the end, a strong first half wasn’t enough to keep Tennessee in the game as Georgia won 43-14.

The Volunteers got a huge spark in the first half following the decision to change starting quarterbacks leading into the game as true freshman Brian Maurer came out firing against the Bulldogs. The freshman threw for 259 yards and a pair of touchdowns in the first half before struggling in the second half of the game.

Following the game, Jeremy Pruitt offered up these comments on the play the team got from under center.

“I thought Brian competed really hard, I thought Jarrett done a nice job when he was in there,” Pruitt said. “It was good for both of them, it was good for our football team moving forward.”

Maurer was injured during the game and did not finish, although Pruitt commented that the injury does not appear to be serious.

Another player that showed up in a big way was senior receiver Jauan Jennings. In his final showing against the Bulldogs, Jennings had seven catches for 114 yards and one score.

“The guy is a competitor. He is the ultimate competitor, he is. He competes every day and the guy loves the University of Tennessee. We need more guys like him,” Pruitt said of Jennings.

Finally, on his message to his team after their strong showing out of the gate, Pruitt did not appreciate the thought of Tennessee earning a moral victory Saturday night in Neyland Stadium.

“Our No. 1 goal is to win every game, every game that we play. That’s our No. 1 goal. We don’t walk out there and say ‘I hope we play good tonight,’ or ‘I hope we play good for the first half.’ Our goal is to find a way to win every game. That’s the bottom line. And that will always be our goal.

“Until we start doing that around here – we aren’t going to stop. That’s got to be the expectation. Our kids hurt, they put a lot into it but Georgia made more plays than we did. They probably did a better job coaching than we did. It all goes into that. It all starts at the top and rolls down. We’ll go back and look at the film and see what we need to do to improve.”