ALABAMA PREPARING FOR DIVISIONAL MATCHUP WITH MISSISSIPPI STATE

In his Tuesday press conference, University of Alabama head football coach Nick Saban was full of praise for a Mississippi State team that seems to be peaking at the right time.

“Certainly a real challenge for us to do the things we need to do as a team to get prepared to play a Mississippi state team that’s probably playing their best football of the season,” Saban said. “Another opportunity for us to sort of show what kind of competitors we are. We’re certainly glad to be back home in Bryant-Denny stadium and hopefully the environment Saturday will be encouraging.”

Mississippi State has had some great players and really good teams under Dan Mullen. NFL stars like Dak Prescott, K.J. Wright and Fletcher Cox all played for Mullen at MSU but none of them ever managed to knock off Alabama. This year’s MSU squad is just 4-5 overall and inexperienced at a lot of positions. Head coach Dan Mullen is anxious to see how his team will respond against the top ranked crimson tide.

“Ya know for us it is very different, we have a very young team. And I wanna see how they react. In some ways it’s not a bad situation to be in. Kinda give it the ‘what the heck’ and let’s find a way to win the game,” Mullen said. “And no one expects us to win, let’s just go find a way to win without any of the pressures or that stuff on them. It’ll be interesting to see how our guys respond in practice this week.”