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Tennessee extends Neyland Stadium sellout streak for Homecoming vs. UConn

IMG_3593by:Grant Ramey11/01/23

GrantRamey

Tennessee Football
Tennessee Athletics

Neyland Stadium is sold out for a 11th straight time as No. 19 Tennessee hosts UConn on Saturday for Homecoming in Knoxville. The Vols and Huskies are scheduled for a Noon Eastern Time kickoff on SEC Network.

Tennessee (6-2), which came in at No. 17 in the College Football Playoff rankings Tuesday night, has won 13 straight games at home and will close the regular-season schedule with three of the remaining four games at home.

After hosting UConn, the Vols go to No. 14 Missouri next Saturday, host No. 1 Georgia on November 18 and close with Vanderbilt at home on November 25.

Tennessee is coming off back-to-back road games, losing 34-20 at Alabama before bouncing back with a 33-27 win at Kentucky on Saturday night. 

Vols riding 13-game home win streak dating back to November 2021

“Players were in this morning,” Josh Heupel said during his weekly press conference on Monday, “got an opportunity to watch the (Kentucky) tape. A lot of good, but a lot of things that we can learn from too. And looking forward to this week, continuing to get better. 

“Looking forward to Homecoming week here. Know it’s a noon kickoff, but expect our fans to show up and show out in a great way and create a great environment. But it’s a great opportunity to to welcome back so many of our alumni here. So looking forward to that.” 

The current 13-game win streak is the longest at Neyland Stadium since Tennessee won 23 in a row from 1996-2000. The sellout streak dates back to last season’s 63-6 win over Akron. 

The current home win streak started with a 60-14 win over South Alabama on November 20, 2021 and continued with a 45-21 win over Vanderbilt in the 2021 regular-season finale.

No. 19 Tennessee vs. UConn, Saturday, Noon ET, SEC Network

Tennessee went 8-0 at home last season with wins over Ball State, Akron, Florida, Alabama, UT Martin, Kentucky and Missouri. So far this season the Vols have home wins over Austin Peay, UTSA, South Carolina and Texas A&M. 

On Sunday Tennessee opened as a 30-point favorite against UConn and the line, as of Wednesday morning, had moved to 34.5. It’s the second biggest spread of the season for the Vols, who were 48.5-point favorites against Austin Peay on September 9.

“I think again, the line of scrimmage is gonna be important,” Heupel said of Saturday’s game. “We can’t let them have balance. Offensively, we gotta destruct the line of scrimmage and then we gotta get off the field on third downs. We gotta do a great job of applying pressure to the quarterback, having haven’t gotten home here much over the last couple of weeks. So that’ll be important.”
 

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