Indiana can sort of cement itself as we are no longer this team that's going to be fighting for six wins anymore.

Malachi Tony, is he going to be ready?

Dante Moore, he showed improvement, better command.

What's going on, y'all, Bud Elliott here of the Coverage Free College Ball podcast. This is summer school, and school is in session in a big way. We're going to go to Go Balls 247. That's my man, Patrick Brown. It does a great job every year for us previewing the Tennessee Balls. Patrick, welcome back to the show, man. Thank you, bud. Glad to be back. I don't know how many years I've done of summer school, but I've clearly not done well enough to graduate. So maybe this will be the year.

Maybe so, man. You know, nice year for Tennessee last year, not quite as good as the highs of

2024, but, you know, not a disaster. It's just, you know, when you taste that success of 2024,

you kind of want to go back in for another bite.

And, you know, they couldn't quite get there with some growing pains and, you know,

passing defense that was a major issue at times.

What's kind of the, I guess, just early, easy one here?

What's the general vibe right now in Knoxville around the program?

It's a little maybe not as rosy as you laid out uh you look at what tennessee did under josh heple you have

some a quick success in that 2021 season when uh they had they were coming off the nca investigation a lot

of roster tone over at that point you couldn't bring in more than 25 guys so you couldn So you couldn't flip the roster like a lot of first year coaches can now where you can bring in 40-something new guys. So they achieved to go say seven and six. And then you have three straight sort of big seasons. You have the 11-win season. You have sort of a little bit of a step back there after that the heights of that

2022 team. Then you, as you mentioned, they were in the playoff two seasons ago in 24. And so in

that three-year run, you win 30 games, you finish in the top 23 times, two top 10 finishes. And so

that sort of resets your your standards, your expectations to where eight and five is a disappointment.

I mean, Tennessee wants, you know, they view themselves as a championship contending team.

And I think what they found is that, you know, they made so much ground so quickly that

that last little bit to get sort of over the hump is sort of the hardest part to get.

And so that that's where Tennessee's got to go. I think last season probably would be viewed more as a disappointment

than maybe some nationally might look at it just because Tennessee lost three home games. They

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