Coming off a bye week against a banged up team that Tennessee Football always beats suggested the Vols should pull off a dominating win Saturday night against the Kentucky Wildcats. Instead, they went into halftime trailing for the fourth straight game and needed multiple fourth quarter defensive stops to win this game.
Still, the Vols got the win 28-18, and honestly, it could have been 52-18. UT missed far too many opportunities. That didn’t stop a ton of players from stepping up and making big plays anyway, to the point that it was sad we could only give out five helmet stickers in the aftermath of this matchup.
To weed out our torchbearers, we only named one player per position, but we’ll make sure to name the other players as honorable mentions. There were close to 10 who could have been recognized as torchbearers. Let’s look at the ones in the running and the ones who earned it. Here are the top Tennessee Football performers in the Vols’ win over Kentucky.
The Tennessee Football Volunteers didn’t have a pretty game against the Wildcats, but the Volunteers still had plenty of players step up.
5. Miles Kitselman
Kentucky decided to play a Cover 4 man for most of the game, which meant the tight ends would be left wide open to make plays. Holden Staes was part of that with three catches for 27 yards. Bru McCoy used his body to shield defenders on quick routes as he finished with five catches for 56 yards. Miles Kitselman was the star, though.
For the game, Kitselman had six catches for 97 yards and a touchdown. He could have had another, but a helmet was put on the ball just as he caught it. Still, he played well all the way around, including blocking very well for Nico Iamaleava and in the run game. As a result, he’s the one who gets on this list.
Now, to be fair, Tennessee Football schemed the tight ends open a lot more in this game because of Kentucky’s defense, so the credit here goes to Josh Heupel, but Kitselman had to step up and take advantage of the situation. There’s no denying he was able to do just that and had somewhat of a breakout game in the process.
NEXT: Torchbearer #4 – Dylan Sampson
