Alabama / Tennessee postgame interviews with Mike Shula, Tyrone Prothro, Juwan Garth, Tim Castille and Shaud Williams

These comments came following the 2003 Tennessee game as Shaud Williams answered questions from the press pool ...

Shaud Williams … It’s just frustrating. You work hard all week and come out prepared. The coaches have a good scheme Then you go out there … and it’s just frustrating.

Yeah, I think we need to get some guys healed up and get some guys back. I think we need to physically and mentally. As bad as it is, I’m hoping everyone will just get away from football and not think about it for a couple of days and just get away. I’m hoping everybody leaves town actually, just to get away from the hectic atmosphere and go somewhere and relax and free their mind. Just go somewhere and not think about football for a couple of days.

So you have no worries that having the extra time will give you extra time to worry about what happened today?

Exactly. Just try to forget about it. Don’t think anything about football. I hope some guys go fishing and hunting. And I hope some guys go to the beach or something. Just get away from Tuscaloosa … just get away and think about something other than football. There’s more to life that football.

Is watching the game film going to be painful considering the missed opportunities that were on the board today?

Well yeah, I going to be painful. Five overtimes and you come out with a loss against Tennessee … it’s going to be painful, whether we took advantage of every opportunity or whether we didn’t. It’s going to be gut wrenching to sit there and watch the tape.

So much has happened to us and the guys on this team deserve so much better. The seniors have been through a lot. It’s just one of those things where you’re searching for answers. You get to the point when you’re like, “What is going on?” You’re searching for answers and it’s frustrating that you can’t come up with any.

When Wesley got hurt, you looked like you physically got sick. Can you tell me what you saw?

Yeah, I just saw his foot and I’ve never seen one break like that. I can’t comment on the break or anything, I don’t know if I’m allowed to, but it was a bad break and I’d never seen one like that before. It’s just kind of made me upset to my stomach.

The 3rd and shorts, the 4th and 1s, the 1st and 2s … will those plays be the ones that haunt you?

Probably so. What team wouldn’t want to be in a 1st and 2 situation? Then to run three plays and not come up without a 1st down or any positive yardage, it’s real frustrating. You practice it all week, and you know where they’re going to line up. It’s disheartening to know … well, I guess they wanted it more than we did because we couldn’t get two yards.

Y’all came up with three turnovers in the first quarter and only came up with three points. In some ways, that must have set the tone for the frustration you guys felt on offense.

Yeah. We got down in the red zone and didn’t convert. That’s going to be frustrating for any team. When you get inside the red zone you’re supposed to score, especially when you get down inside the 5-yard line. You’re supposed to put some points on the board. We just didn’t, but we’re going to look at the tape and get better and try to learn from it.

When you got down there, did Tennessee do what you thought they were going to do?

They did everything we though they were going to do. They were exactly where I thought they would be … you know, it’s just one of those things where we’ve got to find a way to put it in the endzone.

I thought we had it won every time we were out there on the field. I especially thought we had it won when we were up 34-27 and had them 4th and 19. We kind of bailed them out. They came up with a big play … what more can you say. Their guys dug deep down inside and came up with a way to get that first down, and of course they went on to score. At that point, I thought we’d won the game, but never at any point did I think we were out of it.

Mike said he felt like this was a turning point game for this team. Is that the way you feel Shaud?

Yeah, I think we showed everybody in the nation what kind of heart this team has. It would have been easy to give up and give in to being tired and emotionally drained. But nobody on this team is that way. We just kept fighting and fighting. It’s been the story of a lot of guys on this team. They’ve had to fight for everything that they’ve gotten. I think we showed tonight that we’ve got a lot of fight in us. No matter what happens we’re going to go down fighting.

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

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