Alabama F Derrion Reid ruled out against Vanderbilt due to lower-body injury

Alabama will be without forward Derrion Reid for its contest against Vanderbilt tonight, with the talented freshman ruled out on the SEC’s availability report.

Derrion Reid had been battling a lower-body injury and he had missed the previous two contests.

Coach Nate Oats indicated he was ramping things up in practice, but the head man still wasn’t sure whether he’d be able to go against the Commodores as of Monday.

“He’s doing more and more every day. He’s still not doing everything in practice,” Oats said Monday, according to TuscaloosaNews.com. “He’s probably questionable, we’ll see where he’s at tomorrow. This is one of those injuries that if you bring him back too fast, it could be season-long lingering, never 100 percent. And with the way he plays, he’s got to be explosive, athletic, and attacking the rim.”

Derrion Reid is averaging 8.1 points and 3.4 rebounds per game, having started three of the 15 contests he’s appeared in for the Crimson Tide. He has also chipped in 14 assists, five blocks and five steals on the year.

Alabama is set to take on Vanderbilt at 7 p.m. ET, with a broadcast slated for the SEC Network.

The Crimson Tide and Derrion Reid are looking to recover a little bit of momentum after slipping up recently against Ole Miss a week ago.

But Oats believes that recent loss can be a blessing in disguise, and his team responded with a thrilling victory over No. 8 Kentucky at Rupp Arena over the weekend.

“It’d be nice if we had taken care of business Tuesday, but we didn’t,” Oats said postgame. “And you know what? Sometimes you need a loss to learn some lessons. I’ve tried to study coach (Nick) Saban and football, and you go look at most of his championship teams. They took a loss early, got them focused, locked in. And I think that loss against Ole Miss got us refocused.

“This was a completely different team than the one that played Ole Miss. So if we learned the lessons we needed to in that loss Tuesday and we don’t forget them for the remainder of the year, it may have been the best thing to happen to us. We just got to make sure this is not a one-game deal. We got to continue to do the things we’ve done since Tuesday night.”