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Top-ranked Alabama ends Iron Bowl slump

Nov 30, 2008 - 1:33 AM TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (Ticker) -- An over-powering rushing attack and a dominating defense helped Alabama easily end a six-year Iron Bowl drought.

Glen Coffee and Mark Ingram combined for 209 yards and three touchdowns as the top-ranked Crimson Tide cruised to a 36-0 victory over rival Auburn on Saturday.

John Parker Wilson passed for 134 yards and a score for Alabama (12-0, 8-0 SEC West), which had not beaten the Tigers since 2001.

"We don't have a player on our team who has experienced this before, so that was our goal," Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban said. "It was really less about the rivalry and more about doing something that was within our power if we focused on the right things and put our energy into the right things and went out there and played good football."

"All streaks must come to an end, and our streak came to a halt tonight," Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville said. "We ran into a good football team. We needed them to make mistakes and they didn't, and we needed not to make mistakes and we did."

The Crimson Tide were able to spend the final period playing their backups and thinking about next week's monumental SEC championship game against Florida. The winner of that contest will likely go to the BCS national championship game.

"The biggest thing is that we were able to control the line of scrimmage, run it a little bit," Saban said. "Glen (Coffee) had a good game, and that was probably the difference. They couldn't run it on us and that put them in a situation where their quarterback had to try to beat us a different way."

Auburn (5-7, 2-5) managed just 170 yards from scrimmage en route to its sixth loss in seven games. The Tigers, who were ranked as high as ninth this season, failed to become bowl eligible for the first time since 1999.

"I'm committed to get this thing going again," Tuberville said. "In this conference, you're going to have up and down years. I have total confidence that I can get this thing turned around. It was my fault that we got it this way in terms of our offense."

Coffee wore down Auburn's defense, gaining 145 yards on 20 carries. The junior exploded for a 41-yard TD run to give the Crimson Tide a 10-0 edge with 10:28 remaining in the first half.

"I was able to go around the outside and Drew (Davis) had it shielded off," Coffee said. "I just saw the daylight when I turned the corner. The line had cut off everybody so it was just a race to the end zone."

"We were able to make their defensive front pretty much give up by the way we were padding them," Wilson said. "We were able to do it all game and it was working, so we stayed with it."

Ingram put the contest away with a pair of scores in the third quarter. He followed his 1-yard TD rush with a 14-yard rushing score as Alabama took a commanding 29-0 advantage into the fourth quarter.

While Alabama's offense stepped off the accelerator late in the contest, the defense never let up.

Alabama, which blocked a field goal at the end of the first half, forced three turnovers and surrendered just eight first downs. The Tigers had just one drive of more than three plays after the break.

"It is big. It is especially big for the seniors," Crimson Tide defensive tackle Terrance Cody said. "Before the game, the defensive linemen all said that they were going to play this game for our lone senior on the line, Bobby Greenwood. We played this game for him and came out there and played hard."

Kodi Burns completed 9-of-23 passes for 113 yards for Auburn, which was blanked for the 13th time in the 73-game history of this rivalry. The last time the Tide shut out the Tigers in their 1992 championship season.

"It means a lot to earn the shutout," Alabama safety Rashad Johnson said. "We were just trying to get better every week. We practiced hard and were able to finish the game."