Opening odds: Tennessee a huge favorite over UConn

After a couple of weeks on the road, Tennessee will return home to Knoxville this weekend to take on UConn. It’s homecoming weekend for the Volunteers, and they’ll get their final break from SEC play against the Huskies.

UConn is in the middle of another dreadful season, limping down the stretch with a 1-7 record. Their lone win came against Rice back on October 7th.

Predictably, the Huskies are big underdogs as they get ready to head south to face Tennessee. Per DraftKings Sportsbook, Tennessee opened as a 35 point favorite.

Despite the record, UConn has been fairly competitive in recent weeks. They dropped a road game to Boston College in their last game, 21-14. The Huskies narrowly lost to Alex Golesh’s South Florida team, 24-21. Jim Mora’s program has failed to build on his unexpected six-win campaign last year, which saw UConn go to a bowl game for the first time since 2015.

Josh Heupel didn’t have too much to say on Monday about the Huskies.

“I think, again, the line of scrimmage is going to be important,” Heupel said when asked about the matchup. “We can’t let them have balance. Offensively, we’ve got to destruct the line of scrimmage, and then we’ve got to get off the field on third downs. We’ve got do a great job of applying pressure to the quarterback — haven’t gotten home here much over the last couple weeks, so that’ll be important.”

For Tennessee, it’s a much-needed breather ahead of two massive SEC East matchups. Tennessee will head to Missouri after this, then host Georgia on November 18th.

Kickoff for Tennessee and UConn is set for Saturday at noon ET on SEC Network.

Odds/lines subject to change. T&Cs apply. See DraftKings.com/sportsbook for details.