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KNOXVILLE – It wasn’t pretty but it was a win.

The 9th-ranked Tennessee Volunteers weren’t their high-scoring selves in Saturday’s game against Austin Peay in the home opener at Neyland Stadium but they did enough to claim a 30-13 win. Even though the Vols did roll up 456 yards of total offense, it wasn’t the kind of offensive explosion UT fans have grown accustomed to. The defense did well for the second week in a row as they limited the Governors to 79 rushing yards and sacked APSU quarterback Mike DiLiello seven times.

“A win, absolutely but do we need to be a whole lot better? Yes, on offense in particular,” Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel said after the game. “Give credit to (Austin Peay) as they played well and played hard and forced us into turnovers early. There were some positive things on special teams and I thought defensively, there were a lot of positives but they were out there on the football field too much.”

“I thought he tackled extremely well and he was violent,” Heupel said of Aaron Beasley’s game which included five tackles for loss and nine total. “You saw his speed and athleticism and some of his pressures affected their quarterback. He played really well.” Tennessee’s pass rush has been stellar in the first two games of the season and the Vol boss said he likes what he has seen in that facet of the game. “That was one of the areas where we have been intentional in having to address with some of the guys who have come in. We will play a better opponent next week and we will have to do that on the road but for us to be successful, we need to continue to have that.”

Joe Milton III finished the contest with 228 yards and two scores on 21-of-33 passing. Jaylen Wright rushed for 118 yards and Jabari Small added 95. DiLiello passed for 260 yards on 29-of-39 pass attempts. Sam Howard had 13 tackles for the Governors and Jaheim Ward added 10.

The first quarter saw the two teams swap field goals as Maddox Trujillo booted through a 45-yarder for the Govs and Charles Campbell was true from 28 after Warren Burrell recovered an Austin Peay muffed punt at the 13 yard line. The teams were a combined 1-of-10 on third down attempts in the opening quarter. The second quarter was more of the same as Trujillio (34 yards) and Campbell (37 yards) kept things at 6-6. Tennessee grabbed the lead with 15 seconds left when Milton drove his team down the field and converted a six-yard touchdown run to make it 13-6 at the break.

The Vols got the ball to start the third quarter and made it a 20-6 score when Ramel Keaton caught a five-yard pass from Milton. Charles added a 22-yard field goal to push the UT lead to 23-6 at the end of three. Austin Peay didn’t go down without a fight as DiLiello found a wide open Trey Goodman for a 52-yard strike to cut the deficit to two possessions at 23-13. Tennessee answered on their next drive as Milton found tight end McCallin Castles for a 43-yard throw and catch. The Govs threatened once more as they got all the way to the Tennessee one yard line but were held on a fourth down play with 62 seconds remaining and that allowed Tennessee to wrap things up at 30-13.

Conference play begins next week as the Vols travel to Gainesville to take on Florida.