Croom's Thoughts this Week

About execution at Auburn: "That’s what bothered me so much about the game, not so much that we lost but the way we lost. If they’d done something we hadn’t prepared for that’s on the coaches, on me, but that’s not the case. There was nothing new out there at all. I wasn’t sure after Murray State, I just wanted something else to gauge that by. But we are definitely a better football team."

About pre-snap penalties at Auburn: "I was about ready to beat myself. We talk about it, we practice it, we do things from a punitive standpoint. We will continue to do that; the next step is hey, you don’t play. It’s that simple. It’s going to end one way or another."

About the Tulane game: "We haven’t seen them play of course. But they closed out with a flourish last year and I’m sure they’re greatly anticipating playing this game after the difficulties they have gone through. They’re a veteran football team and I expect them to be playing at an emotional high. We will match that emotion and play a lot better game than last week, I have great confidence our players will do that."

About emotions this week: "There’s nothing normal about this situation; it’s not going to be business as usual. There has got to be more brought to the table than normal if we’re going to have a chance to win this football game."

About practice this week: "We’ve got a lot of work to get done this week. It was definitely beneficial to work on our blitz pick-up and on our blitz package on defense because we’ll need to do a good job in both areas this week. We also spent a lot of time working on our young guys, trying to get them along a little bit further. Normally we go out Monday in shorts; we went out in pads to let them know we’ve got to bring everything we’ve got. "

About freshman OT Calvin Wilson: "We’re going to try to get Calvin integrated into the rotation as fast as we can without putting him in harm’s way. I will say this, from what I saw yesterday he is a phenomenal athlete and what was impressive was he didn’t miss any assignments. He hasn’t had any reps in weeks and did not miss assignment. He got mental reps by watching and that says something about him, to pay attention in meetings and practice. He’s a guy that wants to be a good football player."

About Norwood: "He says he feels a lot better but we’re going to give him time to rest. He’ll start doing some things but of course he won’t have contact during the week."

(All quotes taken from David Murray's weekly press conference recap.)