CFP SEMIFINAL AT THE ROSE BOWL GAME PRESENTED BY CAPITAL ONE: ALABAMA VS NOTRE DAME

January 1, 2021

Christian Harris

Patrick Surtain

Dylan Moses

Phidarian Mathis

Alabama Crimson Tide

Alabama 31, Notre Dame 14

THE MODERATOR: Welcome to the 2021 College Football Playoff Semifinal Rose Bowl Game presented by Capital One. Tonight we are joined by the following Alabama defensive student-athletes: We have No. 8 Christian Harris, No. 2 Patrick Surtain, No. 23 Dylan Moses and No. 48 Phil Mathis. We are going to start this evening with brief opening statements from each player about their experience in today's game and then we will roll to any questions with the media members.

Let's start with No. 8 Christian Harris. Give us your thoughts on today's game.

CHRISTIAN HARRIS: You know, it's always good to win a game like this, especially being that it's a playoff game. It'll be my first opportunity to be able to play in a National Championship.

But you know, it's all good. We didn't really play the way we wanted to. I felt like we could have done a lot more. We left a lot more out on the field, so we've just got to make sure we redeem ourselves and fix that for next week or whenever, the 11th.

THE MODERATOR: No. 2, Patrick Surtain, give us your thoughts on today's game.

PATRICK SURTAIN: I felt like we started off great. Like Christian said, we didn't finish how we wanted to. We can always make some corrections going back in the film, but I feel like we flew around. We was around the ball almost every play. We was making plays out there and having fun.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you. And now No. 32, Dylan Moses?

DYLAN MOSES: I feel like we played a good game the first half. I was talking to my coach afterwards, just letting him know that I feel like we need to just finish the game better. We started off really good, and like I said, on the back end we just kind of let up, and I feel like going into the National Championship we can't do that. We have to keep our foot on the pedal, and these are some things that we have to better ourselves with throughout our off week, or not really off week but throughout practice but before the game we've got coming up.

THE MODERATOR: Now No. 48, Phil Mathis.

PHIDARIAN MATHIS: I just feel like we've got to take what we did from this game and learn from it and get back into film so we can go out and ball our next game.

Q. Surtain, with Brian Branch coming in for Malachi Moore, how do you think he performed and how do you think the secondary adapted to having him and Hellams out there in different roles?

PATRICK SURTAIN: Brian did well. He was playing confident out there. We knew he had to come in because Malachi was down, but he held his own and he played a great ballgame. We expect him to come in and play good because it's a key role, so he did good.

THE MODERATOR: Give me your thoughts on winning tonight's game and heading into the championship and what you guys are expecting there. We'll start with Christian.

CHRISTIAN HARRIS: It's a very exciting opportunity, but I think just talking about this game, really we've just got to, like Phil said, learn from it, fix all the mistakes we had and go into this week and just prepare like we did for every other week, for every other game that we played. I think that's really it.

PATRICK SURTAIN: Like Christian said, prepare every week like how we had been, nothing new. Probably a bigger game. We understand that. But if we prepare and focus on what we need to do, there shouldn't be no anxiety going into it. As long as we focus and do what we need to do, we should be fine.

DYLAN MOSES: This is definitely going to be a great opportunity for us to play in a great game against a great team, whoever it's going to be out of Ohio State and Clemson, but I feel like for this game coming up we just have to clean up the little things that we messed up in this game and just focus on finishing.

PHIDARIAN MATHIS: I'm very excited to get back to the championship. I just feel like we've got to go out and practice hard all week long so we can get back to the Bama standard.