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Pruitt, Fulmer talk expectations: 'We're going to be better'

NASHVILLE — It's not a question of Laurel or Yanny for Jeremy Pruitt and Phillip Fulmer this spring. All they hear is win.

With his classic aw-shucks niceness, Tennessee athletics director bit his tongue before shrewdly answering a familiar inquiry at Thursday’s Big Orange Caravan at Nissan Stadium.

What question gets asked the most by fans at these events?

“The same one you asked (earlier),” Fulmer said, smirking.

“What’s the expected number of wins? Which is impossible to answer. You guys know that, too. The fans may not, but they want to know how football is going to do.”

Yes, they do.

Tennessee has made three different caravan stops already this spring — Chattanooga, Memphis and now Nashville — and the prevailing theme at every appearance is expectations.

What are they with a new head coach after a 4-8 season? Does Jeremy Pruitt have the magical elixir to make Tennessee great again?

“The big thing to me is that everyone wants to ask about a number (of wins),” Pruitt said Thursday.

“Well, to me the thing is when you watch a team play to you say, 'Hey when the game is over with that's my team. I like the way they play. I like their enthusiasm. I like their toughness, their competitive spirit. They play together as a team. They never quit. So that's what I'm looking for – playing the right way.”

Pruitt made similar comments Wednesday afternoon on WNML sports radio in Knoxville, downplaying any sort of “ceiling on what (Tennessee) can accomplish this year” and instead focusing on “getting better everyday.”

The focus on effort certainly speaks to managing expectations in Year 1, especially since online oddsmakers have set the over/under on Tennessee’s win total in 2018 at 6.5 victories.

The difficulty for Pruitt and Fulmer though is that the only progress many Tennessee fans will see this fall is on the scoreboard.

Merely making a bowl game isn’t the standard at Tennessee, yet that would represent a solid showing from the Vols after a disastrous 2017 campaign. Once again, Fulmer made it clear Thursday that the program’s turnaround is going to take time, but that fans would be proud of the product Pruitt puts on the field — starting in Year 1.

“We’re going to be better. Whatever that means,” Fulmer said.

“We certainly have a little ways to go to be at the top of this conference from a physical standpoint. But they still keep score in the games and we’ll have an opportunity every Saturday to go put our best out there. If we can consistently do that with discipline and toughness, then I think we can certainly improve on where we’ve been in recent history. But everybody needs to understand, it’s going to take a while to get back to where we want to be, which is at the top of the conference.

“I think our basketball program is a great example of that. First couple of years, even though we weren’t winning all of our games, you enjoyed that team play. They played hard. They played disciplined. They were tough. They worked together. If we do the same kind of thing in football, we’ll win our share and get back to where we all want to be.”

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