It may have been closer than many expected but Alabama left the Citrus Bowl field after earning a hard-fought 36-16 win over Michigan on Wednesday.

The Crimson Tide found themselves down at halftime 16-14 but completely dominated the second half of the game to send the Wolverines packing.

Following the conclusion of the game, Nick Saban was asked to share his message to his team at halftime.

“I just didn’t think we played with the same kind of toughness and aggressively in the first half that we really wanted to play and is really the culture of our team,” Saban said. “I thought we played a lot better in the second half, we played more nickel against their regular, which we have more multiples of things to do and makes us a little more experienced — which is helpful.”

One of the biggest college football storylines each postseason, that only seems to grow each year, is the decision of players to sit out the postseason games that aren’t College Football Playoff games. That’s something that has affected many programs and something that could have happened to Alabama this offseason.

While some may have thought Alabama would have players sit out, that didn’t happen.

Saban was asked about that following the Citrus Bowl win.

“I told everyone, they create value for themselves by coming out there and playing well,” the Alabama coach noted. “This is a great class of juniors that we have, one of the best classes we’ve ever had, and these guys are all great guys and they really want to play for Alabama and they love playing for their team and love playing with their teammates. So, I think that was really what they were saying.”

Finally, on starting quarterback Mac Jones, who completed 16 of 25 passes for 327 yards and three touchdowns, Saban could not hide his praise for this signal-caller.

“Mac did a great job,” Saban responded. “He got us in the right plays, we didn’t always play great around him, they did a better job covering us in the first half than we thought (they could). In the second half, we did a better job of making plays on third down when we needed to.”