re: Tide Hoops | Please Anchor

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Juwan Gary suffers injury in Alabama's win over South Dakota State

Alabama forward Juwan Gary exited Friday night’s game against South Dakota State with a right ankle injury and did not return to the Crimson Tide bench. He came up limping, collapsed once he was off the court and needed help to the UA locker room.

After the 104-88 win over the Jackrabbits, head coach Nate Oats provided an update on Gary.

“It’s a soft-tissue injury,” Oats said. “They’re not quite sure what it is. They’re gonna get an MRI and X-ray first thing in the morning. We’ll probably know more from there. But it’s his right ankle. We don’t know exactly what it is right now.”

Gary contributed two rebounds and an assist in eight minutes before sustaining the injury. Just like the season opener versus Louisiana Tech on Tuesday, where the redshirt sophomore tallied 12 points and 10 rebounds, Gary came off the bench for Alabama. Once he left the contest, UA was essentially left with two players off the bench – JD Davison and Darius Miles.

The Jackrabbits’ bench outscored the Crimson Tide’s reserves, 52-19, on Friday night thanks in large part to Noah Freidel, who led South Dakota State with 23 points on 8-of-13 shooting.

“That’s a problem,” Oats said of the bench. “We’ve gotta get better bench production. Obviously, with Juwan getting hurt, that hurt our bench production today. Really, we just kind of had JD and Darius Miles, and they both played well. But that wasn’t one of JD’s better scoring games (6 points in 24 minutes), but Darius has been giving us really good minutes off the bench.”

It remains unclear if Gary will miss time, but his teammates stepped up in his absence as five players scored in double figures, including Jahvon Quinerly who had a game-high 26 points.

“Juwan, he’s our spark off the bench,” Quinerly said after the SDSU game. “He comes in and provides great energy for us. So when he went down, we definitely had to huddle up and take the game even more serious. And I feel like we showed some fight tonight.”

The Crimson Tide will return to action Tuesday, Nov. 16, when it takes on South Alabama inside Coleman Coliseum. The contest is set to tip-off at 6:30 p.m. CT and air on SEC Network+.

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