Alabama Basketball Forward Juwan Gary Out with Shoulder Injury

Gary suffered the injury less than three minutes into the game at South Carolina on Tuesday night

Alabama basketball redshirt-freshman forward Juwan Gary, just minutes into his first career start for the Crimson Tide, went down with a shoulder injury in Tuesday's game at South Carolina.

At the 17:33 mark of the first half, Gary fell down on the court after getting tangled up with Gamecocks forward Wildens Leveque. Gary was clutching his left shoulder and was screaming in pain.

Gary was immediately taken to the locker room for analysis. A short time later, Alabama athletics sports information director Aaron Jordan informed SEC Network that Gary was out for the remainder of the game due to the injury to his shoulder.

“He’s got a shoulder injury that’s gonna get re-evaluated when we get back,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said after the 81-78 victory on Tuesday night. “It’s disappointing for him. He’s from Columbia, back in his home city. Shoot, his mom lives 10 minutes from here. His parents were at the game. He was primed to play big minutes, but it wasn’t meant to be.

“Hopefully, he’s not out long because he was giving us really good minutes, but we’ll see.”

Senior forward Alex Reese entered the game to replace Gary on the following possession.

Gary, a Columbia, S.C. native, missed his freshman season due to a torn ACL. In his redshirt season, Gary has averaged 2.9 points per game and 1.9 rebounds per game. However, Gary was seeing an increase in minutes over the last few games due to grad-student forward Jordan Bruner still being absent because of a torn meniscus.

Alabama basketball currently sits at No. 11 in both the AP Top 25 and Ferris Mowers Coaches Poll. Despite its high ranking, the Crimson Tide has struggled with injuries in the month of February. In addition to Bruner's injury in January, senior wing Herb Jones has been struggling with consistent back pain while senior forward Alex Reese has also been dealing with a knee issue.

The loss of Gary could potentially have a big impact due to Alabama now being limited in having bigs come in off the bench. Aside from Reese and junior forward James Rojas, the absence of both Gary and Bruner could lead to problems against teams with larger players.