While University of Alabama coach Nick Saban spent a good part of Monday’s press conference talking about complacency, Western Carolina coach Mark Speir called facing Alabama a “monumental task” during the Southern Conference’s weekly coaches’ teleconference.

Here are some other things Saban commented on in regards to Saturday’s game at Bryant-Denny Stadium (4 p.m. ET, SEC Network):

“Obviously (Mississippi State) was a great win for our team. We made plays in the game when we needed to make plays and that speaks a lot to the competitive character of the team, and we played really hard in the game. We did not finish the game and did not always execute like we would like and these are obviously things that we need to work on and improve, which would help our consistency and performance. So really the question really becomes for everyone: ‘Do you want to take advantage of the opportunity that you have created for yourself or do you just want to do what you’ve got  to do to go on and win the next game?’ If that’s the case, we are probably not going to improve a lot, we are not going to get better, and we are not going to do the things we need to do to take advantage of the opportunity. So it’s really kind up to everybody: ‘What do I need to do to get better? What can I do to help my teammates play better? What can I do to practice better’ so that some of the things that start showing up in the games, that show up in practice, are not the kinds of things you want to see because of the habits you’re creating in practice. Whether it’s not carrying out a fake as a quarterback, too many missed tackles on defense because we are not getting into the right position to tackle in practice, runners running their plays exactly right, blocking plays exactly right … all these things we have the opportunity to improve on that in your world, all you care about is the result and in our world we care about what we can get fixed, how we can get better, and what we need to do to do that. It’s really not so much about who you are playing but it’s about who you are and what you have to do to try to see if you can find out if we can take advantage of the opportunity that we have. So that’s what we’re looking forward to trying to do this week.

On Saturday’s game being homecoming:
“Homecoming is one of the great traditions that we have at the University of Alabama. We always look forward to a great atmosphere in the stadium. A lot of people are coming back to reconnect with a lot of great memories they have from when they were in school here and how they have contributed to the traditions that we have in so many ways. Its always really exciting to be a part of all that.

On Western Carolina:
“Western Carolina is a much, much improved team. They have won seven games this year, they only won two games last year. They have a lot of players coming back. (They) do a nice job on offense, got a nice little quarterback who’s a really good athlete that can make plays throwing and running. They’re mostly a spread team. Any team requires that your players respect the technical parts to what they have to do to be successful in the game and that’s why we practice, and that’s why we prepare for the game. We are certainly going to do that this way this week playing this team who has really done a nice job all year long.”

On calling this year’s team one of the most enjoyable during last week’s radio show:
“Basically, what I mean by that is as a head coach when you have energy vampires on your team who never do what they’re supposed to do and take all your energy as a coach. So you’ve got five guys who take all your energy and never get to enjoy the other 95 guys who do everything right. We just don’t seem to have those guys on our team, and we seem to have a lot more guys that sort of like each other, buy in, try to help each other, want to do what’s best for the team, a pretty selfless group of guys when it comes to everybody willing to be all in and do what they have to do to try to help the team. That’s always more fun to deal with as a coach”