Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl respects the Vols’ basketball history so much that he’s determined to help his players become a part of it.

The Vols scored a 104-82 victory over Florida on Tuesday night, winning 20 games faster than any other UT team while also extending the home-court win streak to 28 games.

“I’ll set those goals in front of them,’’ said Pearl, who improved to 4-1 against the Gators. “I’ll tell them when they have an opportunity to do something that’s never been done before.’’

The Vols (20-2, 7-1 SEC) took a two-game lead in the SEC East over the second-place Gators (18-5, 5-3).

Chris Lofton scored 26 points to lead UT, his fifth consecutive game with 20 points or more, and tied his career high with five steals. Tyler Smith and JaJuan Smith had 23 points apiece.

The seventh-ranked Vols trailed 48-44 at halftime and were down 52-46 with 17:58 to play before a Tyler Smith basket ignited a 12-0 run that put UT in the lead for good.

Florida closed to 67-65 on a free throw by Chandler Parsons with 10:28 left in the midst of a six-minute stretch that saw the Gators held without a field goal.

Florida, however, was able to stay within striking distance by hitting 11 of 15 free throws during that span.

It was near the end of that whistle-happy period — the 9:18 mark — when an intentional foul on Florida’s Dan Werner led to a technical foul on J.P. Prince.

That, in turn, led to an ornery and determined bunch of Vols after Nick Calathes hit both technical free throws and Prince missed his, putting UT’s lead at 71-68.

“JaJuan called us in to the huddle and said, ‘If we lose, people are going to say J.P.’s technical foul had something to do with it,’ ’’ Tyler Smith said. “So we had to have our teammates’ back.’’

JaJuan Smith, most often the Vols’ vocal leader, said UT had about all it could take from the young Gators by that point.

“That hard foul got under our skin a little bit,’’ JaJuan Smith said. “At that time of the game, there was a little heat, and there was a little trash talking between the teams. You know we had to have our boy J.P.’s back.’’

A Ramar Smith dunk followed by a Lofton steal and Tyler Smith basket fueled a 13-4 run that Lofton accentuated with a 3-pointer that made it 84-72 with 5:45 remaining.

The Vols closed the final 4½ minutes on a 20-7 tear that included four Florida turnovers, two UT dunks by Tyler Smith and a pair of 3-pointers from Lofton and JaJuan Smith.

“What we did tonight, we’re supposed to do, with the experience we have and when we’re playing here,’’ Pearl said. “But you could see from the start of the night Florida came in here to win this game, as national champions, and they certainly weren’t intimidated.’’

The Gators held a 48-44 halftime lead, shooting a blazing 64.3 percent from the field through the first 20 minutes.

Florida silenced the crowd by racing out to a 16-3 lead, canning seven of their first eight shots while UT made one of its first six.

The Vols battled back to tie the game at 30 with a 22-9 spurt that included seven consecutive made shots.

UT took its first lead, 34-32, on a Prince alley-oop dunk, but the Gators came back with a Werner trey.

Florida built its halftime lead by holding UT to one field goal over the final five minutes of the first half.

Lofton’s hot shooting (7-of-13 from the field, 6-of-11 from 3-point range) came on a night when he learned his 96-year-old grandmother, Addie Lofton, had passed away in Maysville, Ky.

The only other negative for the Vols was a large patch of empty seats at a game that was technically sold out with an announced crowd of 20,036.

“There were 1,400 unused student tickets,’’ UT athletic director Mike Hamilton said glumly. “There were 3,700 allotted for them at this game.

The Vols return to action at 3 p.m. Saturday at LSU (8-13, 1-6).

© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.