Vols-Cavaliers: Fun, but Not So Sweet : Sugar Bowl: A year after the game decided the national championship, the best it can hope for is an offensive show.

The Sugar Bowl, the sweetest of them all last year, was also the luckiest. First, Notre Dame upset No. 1 Colorado in the Orange Bowl, then Miami swaggered down Bourbon Street and through Alabama to claim the national championship.

But this is a new year, and the 1991 Sugar Bowl appears to be only an imitation of its former self. The Saccharine Bowl?

Tonight at the Superdome, in one of the last of the 19 bowl games played this season, No. 9-ranked Tennessee will meet unranked Virginia in a game whose only significance may well be the $3.5 million each team takes home.

What the heck, if it’s not going to be a great game, what’s wrong with it being a fun one? The potential is there for a high-scoring affair. Virginia averaged 40.2 points and 501.5 yards of total offense, and Tennessee averaged 36.8 points and 411.1 yards.

“This is the best matchup of offensive football teams in a bowl game this year,” Tennessee defensive coordinator Larry Lacewell said.

Maybe, but so far the matchup between the Volunteers (8-2-2) and the Cavaliers (8-3) has been viewed as, well, something a lot less potent than the “Hurricanes” poured at Pat O’Brien’s.

It’s probably all Virginia’s fault. Quarterback Shawn Moore, once a Heisman Trophy candidate leading the top-ranked team in the country, admitted as much when he announced Virginia’s rather subdued goal: “We want to prove that we belong.”

At one time, the Cavaliers against anybody looked to be a game involving a No. 1 team, which Virginia was for three consecutive weeks in October. However, punts stay up longer than the Cavaliers, whose hang time was brief.

It is an uneasy, slightly favored Virginia team that plays tonight, knowing full well that the game most people are paying attention to is the one in the Orange Bowl, where No. 1 Colorado faces No. 5 Notre Dame for the second consecutive year.

Such an unwanted circumstance has put Virginia on the defensive. The Cavaliers have spent the week trying to persuade everyone that they should even be here.

“I’m coming back on a mission,” said Moore, whose Heisman hopes disappeared when he dislocated his right thumb and had surgery in mid-November. “I may write a book--’Fighting Back.’ ”

Moore leads the nation in passing efficiency, having completed 144 of 241 passes for 2,262 yards and 21 touchdowns. He has also ran for 306 yards and eight touchdowns.

“A lot of people don’t feel like we belong in the Sugar Bowl,” Moore said. “The past few weeks have been tough, but I don’t think anybody on this team cares about what the critics say.”

For a while, the critics loved Virginia, despite a lightweight schedule that included Kansas, Navy and William & Mary.

On Nov. 3, Virginia was 7-0 and ranked No. 1 when No. 16 Georgia Tech came from 14 points down in the second half to beat the Cavaliers, 41-38, on a 37-yard field goal with seven seconds left. All of Charlottesville mourned.

“We had the whole season in our hands and then we let it slip away,” center Trevor Ryals said. “When we were unbeaten, a lot of people doubted us. Now, they were saying, ‘We told you so.’ ”

Ryals was correct. Virginia made a huge drop to No. 9 the next week, before beating North Carolina to get back to No. 8. But the Cavaliers were upset by Maryland and fell to No. 17, then dropped out of the rankings altogether when they were pounded, 38-13, by Virginia Tech.

The Sugar Bowl had long before made a deal with Virginia, which had spurned the Fiesta Bowl after the Martin Luther King holiday controversy, so New Orleans and the Cavaliers were stuck with each other. Tennessee made it into the game as the Southeastern Conference champion, despite losses to Alabama and Notre Dame and ties with Colorado and Auburn.

Record-setting Virginia receiver Herman Moore said he was realistic about what the game will mean to his team, adding: “If we beat Tennessee, we won’t get much more recognition. If we win, there’ll be questions about why we couldn’t do it in the last part of the season.”

Herman Moore, Shawn Moore’s primary target, caught 54 passes for 1,190 yards and 13 touchdowns. His career average gain per catch of 22.0 yards is an NCAA record, as is his streak of catching touchdown passes in nine consecutive games.

“Herman is the best receiver I’ve ever seen,” said Shawn Moore, cleared to play by Coach George Welsh on Sunday. “Who else is almost 6-feet-5, can high jump 7-2, has great hand-eye coordination and can run a 4.5 (-second 40-yard dash)?”

The Volunteers of Coach Johnny Majors come close with wide receiver Carl Pickens. A 6-2 sophomore, Pickens led the SEC with 917 receiving yards and caught 53 passes, six of them for touchdowns. Alvin Harper, a 6-3 senior, caught eight touchdown passes.

Tennessee, which played five bowl teams and beat probation-stricken Florida, 45-3, made up for its loss of injured running back Chuck Webb by inventing another great runner. Senior tailback Tony Thompson led the SEC in rushing and averaged 105 yards.

Thompson’s counterpart in the Virginia backfield is sophomore tailback Terry Kirby, who rushed for 1,020 yards.

The Volunteers will counter Shawn Moore with quarterback Andy Kelly, who runs a multiple-set offense.

These are the most notable matchups between two high-powered offenses. The Sugar Bowl simply will have to make do with them this year.