Chattanooga Football Postgame Quotes
Chattanooga at Alabama
Bryant-Denny Stadium – Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Saturday – Nov. 19, 2016

Head Coach Russ Huesman
On tonight's play overall:
"I thought our guys played hard with a lot of energy and excitement. It was really physical out there, and I am really proud of how our guys fought. I think that every one of our players played hard. Obviously you can't make mistakes against a really good football team. We got the muffed punt and the turnover there at the end, but I thought we played really good defense for the most part.

"Offensively, we got some first downs. I remember playing them here in 2013 and barely recording a first down. They have got a really good football team, and they probably slept walked coming into this game. I am not trying to think that they were all jacked up to play Chattanooga, but our guys were pretty excited to play, and I am awful proud of them."

On tonight's defensive performance:
"I thought our defense played really well. We sacked him (Jalen Hurts) a bunch, and he probably hasn't been sacked that much this year. We played good, and we did a good job of flushing him out. We gave up the first deep ball, but that's a guy (Calvin Ridley) that can run, and he just got behind us on that play. We made a commitment coming into this game that we weren't going to let them get behind us, and for the most part we did that. That got behind us that one time. I also think we did pretty good against the run, as they only ran for 196 yards, which is pretty good for us."

#15 Alejandro Bennifield, QB
On going against the Alabama defense:
"Going against the No. 1 defense is always tough when you're going against guys like that. They are big and fast, but I feel like our play calling helped us out a lot. We set up some different things with our scheme, and it made us successful."

On how much of a performance against Alabama can help them in the playoffs:
"It can definitely boost our confidence, playing guys like that. Usually, you come in and you do not think you're going to do too well, but once we started going, guys got a lot of confidence. Now we know we can play with them. We can play with anybody."

#93 Keionta Davis, DE
On the success against the Alabama offense:
We just played hard. Everyone did their assignments. We had a few mistakes here and there, and it cost us, but for the most part we played hard. We fought and hung in there."

On looking forward to the playoffs:
"Everybody is excited. We are going to the playoffs, and we are just ready to play the next game. Everybody is ready, excited and ready to get back on the field."

Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban
Opening statement:
"Well that probably wasn't our best effort, but I think you have to give the Chattanooga players a lot of credit. They really played hard, and they played well. They played with a lot of grit and a lot of toughness. We knew this would be a challenge for us at this point in the season to get our guys to play at a high level even though we wanted to kind of build on the momentum. We wanted to get everybody's confidence to where it would be really good going into next week. I thought our players responded a little better in the second half.