Nov. 30, 2002

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KENTUCKY LOCKER ROOM

HEAD COACH GUY MORRISS: “Give credit to Phillip Fulmer and his team. They were focused and ready to play. All week I had talked to our players and the Tennessee football program. These guys know how to win. I said they won’t let you slip up on them like you did last year. This is a good team for us to emulate. I thought our kids needed to hear this. This is the biggest week in college football. We were playing in the Big House and I wanted them to feel, experience and bath in this. We have to learn from this experience. I thought they understood that.

“Lorenzen had a bruised thigh at halftime and I thought I needed to give him a break and give Shane and chance to play.

“The suspensions are an in-house matter, guys violating team rules. They did their time. I don’t know if it affected us. I am disappointed. The team is disappointed and I didn’t talk about today’s game too much. We’ll do that tomorrow. I wanted to recognize the seniors and be as positive as I can. I told the kids that rather than dwell on one negative to use the positive of seven wins. We’ll correct the mistakes and do our assessment as coaches. We’ll plunge right into the offseason and get it out of our system. I was nervous Thursday with the off the field problems. I thought we lost our focus in the last 72 hours. We were flat. We made more mistakes than we made all year. We were primed to play our best game of the year. I don’t know what happened and why. We have to handle playing big league opponents better. We have not done a good job with that this year. I thought we had turned the discipline corner, but we stubbed our toe.

“Artose Pinner sat out the first quarter, but Alexis Bwenge did a good job. We won’t have Artose next year. I thought we would play harder better and smarter. Our first two drives were okay, then we went in the tank. We dropped the ball and didn’t line up correctly.”

TENNESSEE LOCKER ROOM

HEAD COACH PHILLIP FULMER: “I cannot express what this football team has done to fight through the adversity and injuries this season. I appreciate the effort of the seniors and captains. They set the standard for this football team. We also had a good number of underclassmen step up.

“We didn’t have an idea that we would shut them out. The defense worked an excellent game plan. They worked everyday to get the game plan down. The defense has been incredible.

“Alex’s field goal in the second half was big. Casey was also sharp.

“We need the rest. We have no say in what bowl we will go to. We are happy to have a chance at our ninth win considering what this team has been through. It’s been an incredibly tough season. We are much closer to what we are looking for as far as penalties and the running game. We made great strides from the first game to the year’s end.

“We did a good job with the cadence. Our pass rush really bothered them. Our kids were into it and loose and confident. 8-4 is not what we wanted, but it was the best we could do after we lost the fourth game.