Mark Stoops and Kentucky ran into a buzzsaw in Knoxville Saturday night.

The Volunteers racked up 422 total yards of offense and put 44 points on the board. Meanwhile, Kentucky managed a lone touchdown in the first half.

Hendon Hooker continued his march to the Heisman Trophy ceremony with another 3-touchdown performance. Star wide receiver Jalin Hyatt set a Tennessee program record with his 14th touchdown reception in 2022. The Volunteers have 4 more regular season games, too.

While there’s a lot of talk about Tennessee’s offense, the Vols defense seems to be peaking at the right time. It forced Will Levis to throw 3 interceptions and held the Cats to just 2-of-13 on third down. It was complete domination.

Following the game, Stoops had a few comments about Tennessee’s talented team, which could be ranked No. 1 in Tuesday night’s College Football Playoff rankings.

Opening Statement …

“They’re good. We got beat by a better football team. They beat us in virtually every area — outcoached us, outplayed us. Very good football team. You gotta come in here and play as good as you can in every area to expect to compete with a team that’s top 3 in the country and we didn’t do that tonight. I felt like there were moments early where you gotta capitalize and convert. We had some possessions in the first half as we were hanging around and fighting in a one possession game where we had a conversion on third down and had an opportunity to make a play and didn’t. Later we drive down again and had an opportunity to cut it to a 6-point game or whatever it was at that point and throw the interception, which was a heck of a play by them. You can’t do that with a team that’s as explosive as they are on offensively. If you don’t possess the ball and score points, it’s hard to hold on. Eventually, it unraveled on us and you saw the result.”

On offensive struggles …

“It wasn’t just protection. We didn’t run it effectively enough. We weren’t good on play-action game. We weren’t good in the screen game. We weren’t good in any area. You know, when you put up — you have no chance to beat Tennessee if you have 200 yards of offense and not enough first downs.”

On Tennessee’s open receivers …

“Yeah, that was very aggravating. They put stress on you. We know that. It’s really hard to sit here and get beat the way we did and say you did some good things. That’s a punchline waiting to happen for y’all, but there were some good stops. … We were fighting and doing some good things and then, there were some that they hit on us that we weren’t the heck out of that … we should have played better. You can’t do that. … The two big explosive (plays) were something that we weren’t hard on and had a good idea.”

On how tough the SEC is when Tennessee is good …

“Well, I’ve said that since Day 1. There’s a bunch of schools in here that aren’t interested in going backwards. We’re all interested in going forward and they’re having one heck of a year. They’ve scored a lot of points on everybody. Again, you’ve got to play a really complete game (to beat them).”