Will Alabama’s Chris Youngblood play against Creighton? What Nate Oats said

Alabama men’s basketball is ready to add another reinforcement.

South Florida transfer Chris Youngblood, who has yet to play the entire season with an ankle injury, is on track to make his debut for the Crimson Tide on Saturday (7:30 p.m., SEC Network) against Creighton

“Chris has been practicing, still in a limited role,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said Friday. “We haven’t had him do everything. I would expect him to play some minutes. As long as … it’s not just whether his ankle is right. He hasn’t gone hard. His whole body has to do ready to play. He had a little bit of a hiccup. He was able to go some today. As long as he recovers from today, I would expect him to play a limited number of minutes.”

Youngblood is a Tuscaloosa native. He first played for Kennesaw State in college before transferring to South Florida. There he won the AAC co-player of the year in the 2023-24 season.

Youngblood is a 6-4, 223-pound graduate student guard.

Youngblood underwent ankle surgery before the season. Oats said back in September that he expected Youngblood to be 100% by conference play.

“It will be great to get him some reps,” Oats said. “Hopefully this game and then the next three before SEC play starts, we’ll be comfortable enough in the four games to be full by the time we get to SEC play, which is really the original plan. We don’t want to overdo it . As long as everything looks good after today’s practice, we’ll evaluate him tomorrow morning. It looks like he’s going to play.”

Nick Kelly is a beat writer from Alabama AL.com and Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X and Instagram.