Tennessee Tech head coach Dewayne Alexander recaps Golden Eagles’ performance against Vols

Tennessee Tech (0-3) lost at Tennessee (2-1), 56-0, Saturday at Neyland Stadium.

Following the Golden Eagles’ loss, Tennessee Tech head coach Dewayne Alexander met with media and recapped his team’s performance.

“Give credit to Tennessee,” Alexander said. “They’re a very good football team. I thought (Hendon) Hooker, the quarterback came in and played outstanding. He played last week in the game. He came in and did some nice things. I’m very proud of our Golden Eagle team and their effort. We played hard. The biggest challenge that I gave our team is ‘We’re going to play with Golden Eagle pride. We’re going to play hard. We’re going to play all four quarters. We’re going to give great effort. We’re going to stay competitive. We’re going to compete every play. I thought our guys did that.

“Defensively, early on I couldn’t have been more pleased. They made some stops. We actually played good third down defense. Our problem was fourth down defense a few times in the first half. They converted some fourth downs to keep drives alive. We did have a big fourth down stop. We caused a fumble and returned the fumble down deep into their territory. We had a couple of scoring opportunities with a short field in the first half and weren’t able to get any points out of that. I think any field goal there in the first half would have been a big momentum thing for us and our football team. We came out in the second half and we did some things you cannot do. You can’t turn the football over the way that we did. Again, that’s something we’ve done three games in a row, is turn the football over deep in our territory. Giving any kind of football team a short field is always going to be tough. I thought our guys were excited to play. They were prepared to play. They came in, played hard and played with good effort. We just didn’t play well enough to win the football game.”