Florida 23, Tennessee 13

GAINESVILLE — Urban Meyer can emphatically say, "I told you so."

In the midst of all the nationwide talk about how angry the Gators would be over comments Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin made about Meyer earlier in the year, about how the Gators were going to run it up on the rebuilding Vols — maybe win by 50 — Meyer said all week he thought the game would be a "fourth-quarter dogfight."

He was right.

Tennessee scored 10 points off Gator turnovers, held Florida to 115 passing yards, scored the first touchdown of the season against the Gator defense and kept the record crowd of 90,894 on edge for nearly the entire game.

But here's the only thing that matters to Meyer and the No. 1-ranked Gators today: Florida 23, Tennessee 13.

And that was precisely what he told his slightly dejected Gators in the locker room after the game, urging them to spend the evening enjoying what they'd accomplished. He also defended his team against criticism for not blowing the Vols out.

"I think there's so much pressure on this team to perform perfectly, which is good, I'd rather be on that end than, 'Boy, great job we lost by 10,' " Meyer said. "I don't want to do that. But there's a lot of pressure on these guys and I felt it in there (the locker room). … We're all good. We're all grown men and we're a mature team. We're going to watch the film and improve. Can we improve? Yes. And we're 1-0 in the SEC East. And I think we have the longest winning streak in school history. There's a lot of positives."

Florida (3-0) has won five straight over UT (1-2, 0-1) and has the longest winning streak in program history at 13 games. But this win wasn't without its struggles.

UF led 13-6 at halftime, but the Vols seemed to have the momentum. It quickly vanished when Tennessee quarterback Jonathan Crompton was intercepted by Joe Haden on the third play of the second-half opening drive. Florida responded with an eight-play drive culminating in a 35-yard field goal by Caleb Sturgis (one of his three) to take a 16-6 lead with 9:33 left in the third quarter.

Tennessee rushed for 117 yards, 96 by senior Montario Hardesty. The Gators acknowledged they struggled with missed tackles, and Meyer said defensive coordinator Charlie Strong wasn't disappointed after the game.

The Gators had 208 rushing yards, led by quarterback Tim Tebow, who had 76 on 24 carries — including a fumble that led to a UT touchdown.

"It wasn't how we envisioned, but it's a win, so that's good enough for all of us," said Tebow, who was 14-of-19 passing for 115 yards.

For the Vols, there was a sense of a moral victory. Kiffin reminded everyone that the Vols are rebuilding — and that the Gators are the defending national champions.

"I would think in that locker room there were some frustrated guys because they had high expectations about what they were supposed to do," Kiffin said.

In a way, he's right.

The Gators insisted they never expected to run the Vols off the field, but recognize they put on a less than spectacular performance.

"We won the game, but you could tell people really thought we could do a lot better," Haden said.

"You want to give credit where credit is due and that's to Tennessee, which came out and played really hard," Tebow said. "They played a great game and that's a really good Tennessee team that we beat. So you want to give credit to them, but at the same time we are motivated to play to another level and get better and that's something that we'll do. We've just got to keep working."

Antonya English can be reached at english@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3389.