Alabama / Northern Illinois postgame interviews with Mike Shula, Antwan Odom, Freddie Roach, Shaud Williams, Wesley Britt, Brodie Croyle

Shaud Williams (#21 Sr. TB, 5-8 191 lbs. Andrews, TX - Texas Tech transfer)

Press Pool - Was there a level of frustration building among the offense throughout the game?

Shaud Williams - Yeah, a little bit. It’s just the fact that we know what we’re capable of doing. We know what the game plan is. But when you go out there and sputter and don’t execute, it gets a little frustrating at times. But you know, we just have to remember that we have to be patient and let things come to us. That’s really it. It’s kind of hard not to get frustrated, especially after putting so much into a good week of preparation. I feel like we prepared well, and it’s hard not to get frustrated.

All those dot.com polls this week … did that pump you up or was it a bit of a distraction?

No, I don’t really pay any attention to all that stuff. That’s pretty funny. You guys are the ones that keep bringing it up. I don’t pay attention to that stuff. I just want to find ways to help our football team win. I don’t want anything like that to be a distraction because we’ve been through too much.

How hard are you personally taking this loss? It looked like you were one of the more frustrated guys on the field.

I’m taking it pretty hard right now. That’s just the kind of competitor that I am. I’m disappointed in myself and anytime a competitor loses like this he’s always going to point the finger at himself first, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to start by looking at myself in the mirror and ask myself if I did everything I could to help this team win tonight.

Yeah, we just didn’t execute. We were just real inconsistent. They just came out and executed their game plan better than we did. You have to give them credit.

Was it frustrating to get so close there at the end? You had the touchdown run, then the defense shuts them down and gets you back on the field, but you guys weren’t able to generate a whole lot.

Yeah, that was pretty frustrating. He had a chance to go down and score, but just couldn’t get it going. It’s just one of those things that we’re going to have to learn from.

I think he’s a good back. I think he’s going to be a real force in that conference they play in. He runs hard and breaks tackles. I give him a lot of credit and I think he’s going to be force to reckon with in their conference.

How tough was it on your offense being backed up? Every time you got the ball it seemed like you were on the 10 yard line.

It was tough, but we work on things like that during the week. It’s just real frustrating. Although we were backed up inside the 10 a couple of times, we still couldn’t get anything going. It’s just a little frustrating.

How do you turn today into a positive? Does a loss like this motivate you more?

We know we have an Arkansas team coming in that is probably better than the team we played tonight. Those guys are coming in here hungry and ready to play and we’re going to have our work cut out for us.

Coach Rader was talking about how Brodie Croyle is taking this loss really hard and that it’s up to him and other players to motivate the team. What do you feel like you have to do help out Brodie, and how did you think he played tonight?

I think Brodie played well. And Brodie is such a competitor that he’s probably taking it just as hard as I am. I just told him that if this team is going to come together and get this thing going, we need him to step up and lead. Brodie’s going to be fine. He’ll go home tonight and think about the loss. He’s going to come back tomorrow ready to play. I have no doubt in my mind that Brodie’s going to come out tomorrow and lead us and we’ll get it all going.

With no easy weeks ahead after playing Northern Illinois, is that going to make it tougher or easier to go into the SEC schedule?

I think it makes it easier for us. Just because we know what we’re going up against now. You know about Arkansas and Tennessee and we know what kind of teams they’re going to bring. It makes it easier because we know what we’re going against.

Click on the name for parts of their post-game interviews ..
Coach Mike Shula (Alabama Crimson Tide Head Coach)

Antwan Odom (#98 Jr. RDE, 6-5 277 lbs. Bayou La Batre, AL - Alma Bryant High)

Brodie Croyle (#12 So. QB, 6-3 200 lbs. Rainbow City, AL - Westbrook Christian High)

Michael Turner (#32 Sr. RB, 6-0 228 lbs. North Chicago) and Josh Haldi (#10 Jr. QB, 6-2 202 lbs. Madison, OH)

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