Nick Saban Has High Praise for Texas Longhorns
It’s time for Round 2 of Nick Saban vs. Steve Sarkisian after the Crimson Tide and Longhorns played a 20-19 thriller in Austin last season.
As is typically the case, Saban came out on top in that meeting, with his record now standing at 28-2 against former assistants.
However, the game was much closer than the public initially expected, and the line in Tuscaloosa this Saturday is only seven points.
Saban has high praise for his Week 2 opponent, who took his Crimson Tide to the wire last season, and hope to get over the hump and pull off the upset this time around.
“This is a really good team all around,” head coach Nick Saban said in his press conference Tuesday. “It’s going to be an opportunity for our team to — where are we as a team, where are you as a player, you’re going to play against a really good player. That usually says ‘where am I as a player.’ This is going to be a good barometer for us to find out where are we as a team. We’re going to focus on doing a great job of trying to get our guys to prepare, to play a great game and do a good job in terms of execution.”
Saban expects the Longhorns to bring the same philosophy into this weekend’s game as they did a year ago, and that was nearly good enough to get the job done.
“You’re always looking at what a team does technically,” Saban said. “It’s always most interesting to see, you know, what was their philosophy of what they did technically. Whether it was play defense against you or attack you offensively or what they did on special teams. I think you use that information as a history of maybe what you might see again and other things they did periodically that changed. I don’t think you look back at the game from as much of a psychological standpoint as you do a technical standpoint.”
Texas took down Rice 37-10 in Week 1, but will obviously have a much taller task this week in SEC country. Kickoff is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. CT, with coverage found on ESPN.
