Dooley says key is Vols are finishing drives, scoring points

Even after Tennessee's carefree romp at Memphis, Derek Dooley expressed some disappointment that the Vols missed some opportunities to really bury the Tigers in the second half. One week later, after UT kicked Ole Miss while it was down with 21 unanswered points in the second half of Saturday's 52-14 victory, the coach had few gripes. "The team stayed focused," Dooley said on his Sunday teleconference. "I told them in the second half I didn't want anyone looking at the scoreboard. It was 0-0 and we were going to go out and play as hard as we did in the first half. "And they did that." It just hadn't happened in that fashion since the Vols' season opener against UT Martin, when they outscored the Skyhawks by 30 in the final 30 minutes. In between that game and Saturday's, UT (4-6, 1-5 SEC) was outscored 158-52 in the third and fourth quarters, a stretch that included three scoreless second halves. The term "second-half meltdown" came up more than once in Dooley's news conferences throughout the rough patch. And each time it did, he bristled at the notion that UT was exclusively an underachieving team after halftime. In hindsight, now that it appears UT's second-half woes have been temporarily remedied heading into Saturday's game at Vanderbilt (TV: CSS, 7:30 p.m.), Dooley said he felt the same way. "I've always felt like there were problems that were happening in the first half and over time it was a cumulative effect," Dooley said. "It wasn't that we played great in the first half and it was a disaster in the second half. "What it comes down to is we're not giving up as many big plays on defense and we're finishing drives on offense, scoring points."