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read interviews with Coach Mike Shula, Roman Harper, Brodie Croyle and Todd Bates (posted 9/12/04)
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Payback! Rebels Routed 28-7
Roman Harper (#41 FS Jr. 6-1 197 lbs. 2 VL Prattville AL, Prattville High School)

Roman Harper led the Alabama defense with 11 tackles, including a sack and forced a fumble that set up a touchdown

These comments came following the 2004 Ole Miss as Roman Harper answered questions from the press pool ...

Press Pool ... Can you talk about starting out in the hole a couple of times and how you progressed from there?

Roman Harper ... We knew he had to come out and fight through it. We wanted to come out and establish the hitting game. They hit us first last year. This year we wanted to hit them before they hit us. I think we did that. We tried to establish the line of scrimmage on their side of the ball, and we did that early. Of course, the offense struggled a little bit early, but that's OK. That's going to happen. There were little jitters here and there, but we had to stay focused and keep fighting.

What happened on that big sack? Take us through that play.

We had been blitzing them all night from the outside, so we just switched it up and called my number through the middle. He didn't even see me and I just hit him. I didn't even know the ball was out until the last second and everyone jumped on it. So it was a good call and I was lucky enough to come wide open.

Can you talk about how this helps the team put last season behind it?

Well, to us, we put last season behind us on January 15th, when we started our off-season workouts. We knew we had to come out and prove a lot of things to a lot of people this year. We're just trying to get off to a good start, and keep fighting, and keep our eyes on the future.

Can you talk about (Ole Miss quarterback Micheal) Spurlock's play, and how you kind of got him out of the game?

Yeah, we kept him rattled. That was our goal for tonight. We weren't going to let him go and beat us. I think we accomplished that. He came out and we hit him early. We tried to blitz him as much as we could to confuse him. We threw a lot of different things at him. Unfortunately, the second quarterback came in and made some plays, but that's going to happen.