Nick Saban praises Alabama for avoiding 'trap game,' clinching SEC West

Alabama steamrolled Kentucky 49-21 on Saturday, jumping out to an early three-touchdown lead within the first seven minutes of the game. The Crimson Tide hardly appeared to break a sweat.

Coach Nick Saban went from worrying to being quite satisfied.

“I was really pleased that the team didn’t buy into the rat poison or whatever you want to call it,” Saban said. “I thought this was a little bit of a trap game.”

If it was a trap game, Alabama answered the call with aplomb. The Crimson Tide were dominant from start to finish, bottling up Wildcats leading rusher Ray Davis and making life difficult on quarterback Devin Leary.

There really wasn’t a single area of the game that Kentucky won, which checks out with what Saban asked of his team.

“I actually asked the players yesterday in the team meeting to stand up and say what they had to do,” Saban said. “Each position. Each leader at each position. And I told them before the game I trusted that they would go out and do that, and that’s exactly what they did.”

Alabama has certainly turned its fortunes around after losing the second game of the season to Texas. Back then, the team was uncertain at quarterback and temporarily benched quarterback Jalen Milroe.

Milroe has since regained his job and turned into a phenomenal player. He had three passing touchdowns and three rushing touchdowns against the Wildcats.

“This team’s come a long ways. They’ve worked hard,” Saban said. “There’s great togetherness, good leadership on the team. A lot of guys have made significant improvement because they’ve stayed positive and stayed the course in terms of listening to what the coaches had to say about what they needed to improve.

“I trust in these guys that they’re going to do the right things, make good choices and decisions, which is going to help them grow and develop as a team and hopefully finish business throughout the rest of this season in terms of what we have to do to continue to get better and see if we can create an opportunity for ourself.”

The win also sewed up the SEC West for Alabama, which has a head-to-head win over one-loss Ole Miss. The Crimson Tide would win a tiebreaker at 7-1, so they’re headed to the SEC Championship Game regardless of what happens in the conference finale against Auburn.

“Obviously it’s great that we won the West and gonna have an opportunity to play in the SEC Championship Game, which I’m very happy for this team that they were able to accomplish that,” Saban said.

Of course, that might not have been possible with a loss to Kentucky on Saturday.

Saban’s guys made sure that wasn’t an issue.

“A couple guys came up to me, I always talk to them about if you play on the road, if you empty the stadium that means you really beat the other team,” Saban said. “So a couple guys, I didn’t use that in this game, but they certainly got the message and said, ‘Hey coach, look around.’ So I’m pretty proud of them, the way they played today.”