KNOXVILLE — Lane Kiffin looked around the media room following Tennessee’s 31-13 victory over No. 21 South Carolina late Saturday night. It was still officially Halloween, at least for a few more minutes. America’s clocks were about to fall back. The final third of UT’s season was about to move forward.

“We just beat a Top 25 opponent,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s all about winning. We’re going down the stretch.”

They are about to go down the stretch with a 4-4 overall record, 2-3 in the Southeastern Conference. It is not the stuff of Coach of the Year honors, at least not yet. But it is the stuff of accomplishment, even if it’s an accomplishment that may have been lost amid the Friday controversy that was the Kiffin Clause regarding the coach’s recent criticism of SEC officiating and Saturday night’s donning of black jerseys. That seemed to be all anyone was talking about from the moment the Volunteers donned them just before kickoff.

And the black jerseys were an interesting story, if only for how the players seemed to respond to them.

“We really needed to win if we ever wanted to be able to wear them again,” said defensive lineman Dan Williams, as if a loss would surely doom the Vols.

The funny thing is, not long after Williams spoke, UT athletic director Mike Hamilton said, “Our colors are orange and white. This is kind of a one-time thing.”

So maybe they were doomed to a single, solitary Halloween night no matter how the team played in them.

And if that be the case, it was surely a lot of work for not much reward. Captains Eric Berry and Montario Hardesty had to meet with Hamilton at lunch Wednesday to convince the AD to consider them.

Then a Knoxville company had to swiftly manufacture them.

“A local company got this done and did it in a couple of days and actually kept it a secret, which was amazing to me,” Hamilton said. “We don’t have these available for retail because we hadn’t planned on doing this.”

But the Vols had planned on winning this game — winning it the way this team wins best, through defense. Tennessee forced four turnovers, more than enough free possessions to overcome South Carolina’s overall edge in yards (365 to 341).

It’s becoming what Kiffin ball is all about — maximizing opportunities.

So what do we know at November’s dawn, almost always the start of a successful Vols run to the finish?

One of the sport’s greatest truisms is that you either get better or you get worse. No one stays the same. If anything has been unfairly lost or overlooked during Lane Kiffin’s inaugural “Look at Me” Tour, it may be that he and his staff are doing a marvelous coaching job.

It’s not that the Vols look like an SEC championship team. Or that they should. It’s that they play like the kind of team no Florida or Alabama would want to play to reach the SEC title game.

They are salty. They are tough, especially physically. And they appear supremely confident, a remarkable situation indeed for a team with four losses.

It doesn’t mean at least one nagging question won’t halt this team through the winter.

The loudest roar of the second half had to have been tinged with a ribbon of regret. Backup kicker Chad Cunningham booted a 39-yard field goal with 4:23 to play to move the Vols ahead 31-13, and an odd cheer arose, as if the Neyland faithful, all at once, thought, “Oh, why didn’t we do this last week?”

Though this may well end UT’s kicking woes — Starting kicker Daniel Lincoln had watched his third straight field goal attempt over two games blocked in opening period — it also opened a painful wound.

What if Kiffin had sent Cunningham onto the field against Alabama last Saturday to kick the 44-yarder that Lincoln had blocked? There’s no denying that Cunningham has the stronger leg. There’s no denying he might easily have cleared the hulking Terrence Cody’s mighty left hand.

And if all that had happened, and if the kick had been good, maybe they wouldn’t have needed to haul out those black jerseys to fire up everybody on a cold Halloween night.

Then again, how more fun was it that they did?