Alabama Football Hosts Western Kentucky to Begin 2016 Home Schedule
9/5/2016 3:03:00 PM | Football
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - The University of Alabama football team put in a 90-minute session in shells on Monday afternoon outdoors on the Thomas-Drew Practice Fields in preparation for this weekend's home opener against Western Kentucky.
The Crimson Tide's practice to open the new week focused on making improvements in all areas following Saturday's 52-6 win over the 20th-ranked USC Trojans. Alabama also began its gameplanning for this weekend's home opener against Western Kentucky. The Tide and Hilltoppers are scheduled for a 2:30 p.m. CT kickoff at Bryant-Denny Stadium on ESPN2. Beth Mowins, Anthony Becht and Rocky Boiman will be on the call.
Alabama will practice on Tuesday and Wednesday in full pads as the team's focus narrows towards stopping a Western Kentucky offense that put together 649 yards of total offense and 46 points last Thursday against Rice.
Nick Saban met with the media prior to practice on Monday afternoon. Following is his opening statement:
"After looking at the film of the USC game obviously we didn't get off to the kind of start that we wanted to get off to in the game. I think the first quarter was a little shaky on both sides of the ball. As the game went on, we kind of settled in to the game. The players responded and competed and played through some adversity. We need to play with a lot better consistency, but we made some big plays. We made some explosive plays on offense. The defense was pretty consistent throughout the game, and I thought did a pretty good job of stopping the run and being able to play a lot of coverages that allowed us to minimize their explosive plays with some very good skill guys. Obviously the lesson to be learned is we want to be more ready to play and get off to a fast start. Start fast, and finish strong is something that we talk about, and obviously being able to play with a little bit more discipline and consistency will help us become a better team. I think that's the objective.
"When you start playing games, people don't realize this, and I don't care what position you play, what team you play on, what unit you play on, people really study what you do. They study your strengths. They study your weaknesses, and they do things to take away what you can do, and you have to be able to improve through that as a player, whether it is individually or collectively as a unit so you can continue to have success and not get taken advantage of. The best example I can give is one of my own. I was one of these outstanding high school baseball hitters. When I went to college, I thought I would be an outstanding college hitter. Because they never did a book when I was in high school, they never knew what pitches I couldn't hit. When they started doing the book in college and figured out that low outside slider I'd hit it like a weak ground ball to second base, then the next thing you know if you don't learn to hit that pitch that's all you see. I'm talking about the kind you don't even want to run to first base on. You have to improve as a player. You have to analyze and understand and know what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are and work on overcoming those things individually and collectively as a team. That's something that we obviously need to do as a team right now.
"The team we are playing this week, Western Kentucky, I think most people probably don't even know that they were a top 25 team, finished ranked 24th in the country last year with a 12-2 record and actually won a bowl game and won their conference. They have a lot of starters back on that team, like nine on offense. Even though they lost their quarterback they have a transfer quarterback (Mike White) who started at another Division I school (South Florida). They've got really good skill guys. These guys play with a lot of toughness and a lot of energy. They've got a lot of confidence. They score a lot of points on offense. They've got one of the most prolific passing attacks that we're going to see and some very good players to implement it, and they play really tough, physical defensive football. This is a good team, and I know that I'm preaching to the choir here when it comes to what you guys create and what you think, but it is what it is. We had two teams in our league that actually lost to teams that were nowhere near this good, nowhere near what they accomplished a year ago, nowhere near the number of players coming back, and a third team that had to win in overtime. These are not things that we can take at all for granted. We need to get ready to play this game as if we are playing a really good football team because we are."
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