Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel sent a message earlier this week with his somewhat fiery response to a question that called the Vols’ matchup this weekend against Kennesaw State a “tune-up game.”

“It’s not a tune-up,” said Heupel on Monday. “You better show up every Saturday. You look at the scores (in college football) and the media, your family, your girlfriend, or whoever, might want to pigeonhole you, but you decide, collectively, who you are as a team.”

“You can look at the scores every week — you better get ready to go play when the ball is teed up. You better be playing at your best. The game unfolds how it unfolds, but you better prepare to go play for 60 minutes.”

Heupel sent another message on Thursday night — this time directly to his team — by challenging his players to clean up the excessive penalties.

The Vols committed 14 penalties for 142 yards in their win against Georgia Tech last weekend.

“The first thing is not hurting ourselves [with] foolish penalties,” said Heupel on The Mike Keith Show when asked where he wants to see his team improve against Kennesaw State. “I want to see us play clean and play smart.”

It was the second time this week that Heupel has mentioned Tennessee’s issues with penalties. On Monday, Heupel noted that he addressed the issue with the team to start the week.

“I addressed it today,” said Heupel. “I went through all of them (penalties). Our football team has got the ability to grow into a good football team if we make the choices to do the right things. I presented the video of it today, and our players have gotta make a choice to not hurt the football team.”

No team is going to play perfect — penalties are going to happen. It’s just part of the game. But Tennessee can’t have 14 penalties in a game and expect to beat an SEC opponent. It’ll be a good sign for the Vols moving forward if they can significantly cut down on the penalties against Kennesaw State on Saturday night in Neyland Stadium.