Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban
Opening statement:
“We had a very productive spring. I think now is the time, in the locker room after the A-Day game, look it’s time for us to come together and become a team. No offense, no defense, no crimson, no white. Everybody has got to create winning habits. You don’t want to introduce any habits in your life that aren’t going to be productive for you. Your behavior is a habit, and we want our guys to have winning habits. This is the time of the year, there are hard times in football. Fall camp, offseason program, spring practice and then there is time where you got to finish school. You’re going to workout in a little lighter pace over May, get some time to recover, rehab, get some guys healthy. Then when we come back and start summer school, then we are sort of grinding again. I think the individuals on the team make a decision of what their habits are going to be, have winning habits or losing habits. Buy into what you need to do to be a team, play like we need you to play, with effort, toughness, discipline to do your job. I think that’s the time. The game today, obviously we had a significant number of starters, significant number of players, who were out today for medical reasons. I don’t think you can get a total assessment on those guys who didn’t play, but it was a great opportunity for some of the guys who got to play a lot more today than if everybody had been able to play in the game. For the most part, we didn’t have any issues all spring long, so we made a lot of progress. I’m not satisfied with where we are, we have a lot of work to do as a team but certainly looking forward to taking every opportunity that we have to improve our team and continue to improve our players. It was a fun game. We made a lot of mistakes, drop balls, turnovers, had a couple explosive plays called back because of pre-snap penalties, illegal formation, covering up people. These are all things that can get fixed, but there was a lot of good things out there as well.”
On almost getting knocked down during an interception return:
“The players know that if they run into me it is very similar to running into the goal post, so it is not a good choice and decision for them so they usually avoid me. I wear a jacket like this, so they can really see where I am for their safety, not really for mine. They all avoided. It shows athleticism on their part. It also showed their respect for player safety by not running into me.”
On Agiye Hall’s performance today and this spring:
“I think that he is a young player, he is getting better every day. I think that he has a lot of ability. I think that he is not 100 percent sure sometimes of what he is doing. So to get him to play fast all the time is something that he wants to do and naturally does, but like any player most of the time when they are not sure of what they are doing, they aren’t playing fast. He has made significant improvement throughout the spring, and he is someone that we think has a lot of potential. He makes a lot of contested catches. He’s got great size. He’s got really some explosive speed that I think we need. We need some guys to compliment John Metchie when he gets back. We are pleased with his progress. He had a really good spring.”
