Nico Iamaleava threw four touchdown passes for the second straight week, despite never doing that in his career beforehand, and led Tennessee to a 36-23 win over the Vanderbilt Commodores to close out the regular season in Nashville on Saturday. In the process, the Vols effectively clinched a College Football Playoff spot.
Coming into the game ranked No. 8 in the CFP, Tennessee fell behind 14-0 early and trailed 17-7 at the end of the first quarter. The Vols gave up a kickoff return for a touchdown on the opening play of the game, and Dylan Sampson then fumbled on the ensuing drive to set up Vandy’s two scores.
After that, Tennessee marched 73 yards down the field for a touchdown drive, capped off by a 28-yard pass from Nico Iamaleava to Dont’e Thornton Jr, and Vandy responded with a field goal. The two teams each had a turnover on downs and threw an interception on their next two offensive possessions, and UT then cut it to one score with a 50-yard field goal.
Josh Heupel’s team then forced a Vanderbilt punt before proceeding to score a touchdown on each of their next three drives. The first was an 86-yard touchdown drive to Thornton. UT then capped off a 96-yard drive in just over two minutes with a touchdown pass from Iamaleava to Miles Kitselman.
To open the second half, the Vols had a 13-play, 75-yard drive capped off by a 14-yard touchdown pass from Iamaleava to Mike Matthews. Tyre West forced a safety two drives later with a tackle on a run play in the end zone, and UT then marched down the field 46 yards for a field goal to go up 36-17, by three scores.
Iamaleava completed 18 of 26 passes for 257 yards and one interception while running for another 36 yard in addition to his scores. Sampson, meanwhile, had 25 carries for 178 yards. Thornton led the team in receiving with three catches for 118 yards and two touchdowns, but he didn’t finish the game due to injury. Bru McCoy was also hurt.
Defensively, the Vols held Diego Pavia to 8-of-17 passing for 104 yards, one touchdown and one interception, but one of those touchdowns was in the fourth quarter when the Vols were up 36-17 and just trying to run clock. That was the only defensive touchdown allowed not off a turnover or special teams.
Heupel’s team finish the year 10-2, its second 10-win season in three years after the Vols failed to win 10 games from 2008 to 2021 and failed to have fewer than three regular season losses from 2005 to 2021. Vanderbilt still finishes the year 6-6 and will make a bowl game Clark Lea’s fourth year.
