Chris Lofton

KNOXVILLE — If there was any doubt before this season, there shouldn’t be any more.

Bruce Pearl is an optimist.

After being asked several times Saturday night why his Tennessee men’s basketball team nearly lost a 17-point lead in the final seven minutes at Mississippi State, Pearl responded that getting that big lead despite foul trouble and a flu bug was “pretty special.”

When asked how his Volunteers’ defense — which had been the nation’s best against 3-pointers — allowed the Bulldogs to drain 7 of 8 from behind the arc on their late spurt, Pearl pointed to the potential game-tying trey that Jamont Gordon missed in the final seconds.

“We definitely hung in there,” Pearl said.

And they won.

On the road.

Again.

There were just five Southeastern Conference road wins last week, and the seventh-ranked Vols (19-2, 6-1) had two of them.

UT is the SEC’s only one-loss team, and two of the four 2-loss teams (Florida and Mississippi State) were pounded on the road.

The Vols have college basketball’s highest RPI ranking thanks largely to tremendous success in road and neutral-site games. Tennessee is 8-2 away from Thompson-Boling Arena this season, including wins over Gonzaga, Xavier, West Virginia, Mississippi State and mid-major menaces Western Kentucky and UT-Chattanooga — five teams with a combined 80-30 record.

“Good teams win at home,” Tennessee sophomore forward Wayne Chism said. “Great teams win at home and on the road.”

Senior guard Chris Lofton maintains that UT is “a good team trying to become a great team,” but he added that piling up road victories is a major step in that process.

“Any time you can get a win on the road, that’s great,” Lofton said. “It doesn’t happen very often.”

Pearl gives much (but not all) of the credit for UT’s road turnaround to senior guards Lofton, JaJuan Smith and Jordan Howell. That trio at times carried the Vols in the second halves at Alabama and Mississippi State last week.

Those three — who generally play together in the final minutes — have played a combined 321 college games.

“We know what it feels like to lose on the road a lot,” Lofton said. “Our freshman year was a bad year for us. Even last year, we didn’t win a lot on the road.

“We made it (a point) this year to win home and away, you know, and separate ourselves. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

UT can undoubtedly relate to the road struggles of Tuesday’s opponent — Florida. The Gators’ ravaged roster looks little like the one that one the past two national championships.

The Baby Gators (18-4, 5-2 SEC) are talented, and they’re second to Tennessee in the SEC Eastern Division, but they’re just 2-3 on the road this season. That doesn’t seem to bode well against the experienced Vols, who are 40-2 under Pearl in a suddenly-intimidating Thompson-Boling Arena.

As UT’s backcourt knows, sometimes it just takes time to learn how to win SEC road games.