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Alabama basketball injury report heading into NCAA Tournament

Alabama head coach Nate Oats coaches his players during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Tennessee, Saturday, March 2, 2024, in Tuscaloosa, Ala. (AP Photo/Vasha Hunt)AP

No. 4 Alabama basketball (21-11, 13-6 SEC) is slumping into the NCAA Tournament, and part of that struggle has come from injuries to a pair of starters. That shouldn’t be the case moving forward.

Settled in Spokane, Washington, on Thursday for practice, head coach Nate Oats provided an update on his team’s health. He said Rylan Griffen and Latrell Wrightsell Jr. will not have a minutes restriction against No. 13 Charleston Friday night. However, Davin Cosby will be unavailable after breaking his foot in practice.

“We’ll finally be healthy with Rylan and Trelly both able to play, which it’s been a little while since we’ve had both those guys fully capable without a minutes restriction,” Oats said during his pregame news conference. “We really tried to get healthy over this last, well, we’ve only played the one game in the last 12 days. Our biggest goal was just to try to get healthy. I feel like we’re as close to healthy as we’ve been in a while.”

Cosby, a freshman guard, is averaging 7.8 minutes, 3.6 points and 0.9 rebounds across 22 games. He sparked UA with 15 points at Ole Miss on Feb. 28

Wrightsell was diagnosed with a “head” injury following Alabama’s 25-point win over Texas A&M on Feb. 17. He then missed the next four matchups, returning on March 5 at Florida. The Tide hasn’t lost this season when Wrightsell has scored more than 10 points. Griffen, went down with a calf injury the game Wrightsell returned. He was cleared for UA’s conference tournament quarterfinal against Florida.

“We’ll finally be healthy with Rylan and Trelly both able to play, which it’s been a little while since we’ve had both those guys fully capable without a minutes restriction,” Oats said during his pregame news conference. “We really tried to get healthy over this last, well, we’ve only played the one game in the last 12 days. Our biggest goal was just to try to get healthy. I feel like we’re as close to healthy as we’ve been in a while.

Cosby, a freshman guard, is averaging 7.8 minutes, 3.6 points and 0.9 rebounds across 22 games. He sparked UA with 15 points at Ole Miss on Feb. 28.

Wrightsell was diagnosed with a “head” injury following Alabama’s 25-point win over Texas A&M on Feb. 17. He then missed the next four matchups, returning on March 5 at Florida. The Tide hasn’t lost this season when Wrightsell has scored more than 10 points. Griffen, went down with a calf injury the game Wrightsell returned. He was cleared for UA’s conference tournament quarterfinal against Florida.

Alabama and Charleston will meet at 6:35 p.m. on truTV. The second-round game vs. the winner of Saint Mary’s and Grand Canyon will be played on Sunday.

St. Louis Battlehawks offensive lineman Dallas Warmack during an XFL game against the D.C. Defenders on March 5, 2023, at Audi Field in Washington.(Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images)

Offensive lineman Dallas Warmack was the odd man out along the St. Louis Battlehawks’ offensive line as training camp ended for the United Football League team.

St. Louis coach Anthony Becht talked about Warmack on Thursday when discussing the difficulty of reducing the Battlehawks’ 58-player roster to the regular-season limit of 50.

After playing as a leading reserve for St. Louis in the XFL last season, the former Alabama lineman was waived by the Battlehawks on Friday.

“A lot of competition this year when you look at our secondary, when you look at interior defensive line, you look at offensive line,” Becht said on Thursday afternoon. “Really amped up this year, so we really have a lot of talented players, and we have to make some tough decisions on guys like Dallas and Dohnovan West and (Abdul) Beecham and even (Teton) Saltes that we picked up. …

“Right now, we do have 10 offensive linemen. Our plan right now is to keep nine, so we have an incredibly tough decision to make here across the board, and again we’ll make that here into the evening, and we’ll feel good about it. I love the fact that we have to make tough decisions because that means Dave Boller, our GM, and myself have found players that have upped that competition level. There are a lot of plug-and-play guys. We do feel like we have two starting lines, which is crazy to say because they’re in a spring league. …

“All those guys, in particular Dallas, we’re all evaluating these players, and it’s a close deal, so we feel like we got a good room at the moment.”

Since last season, the XFL merged with the USFL to form a single spring-football league. St. Louis was among the four XFL teams to join four USFL franchises in the new circuit. But that left eight teams from the 2023 leagues on the sideline, stacking the United Football League with experienced players looking for roster spots.

The Battlehawks open the season against the Michigan Panthers at 3 p.m. CDT March 30 at Ford Field in Detroit. FOX will televise the game.

Warmack played in seven games as a freshman and nine as a sophomore at Alabama before a redshirt season in 2017. He transferred to Oregon and played right guard for the Ducks in 2018 and 2019.

Warmack’s attempts to catch on in the NFL as an undrafted free agent were unsuccessful. Warmack returned to the field with the Tampa Bay Bandits in the USFL in 2022 before playing for the Battlehawks last season