Alabama Athletics
Nick Saban updates status of LaBryan Ray, Antonio Alfano
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama head football coach Nick Saban gave updates on injured junior defensive end LaBryan Ray, as well as freshman defensive lineman Antonio Alfano.
Ray re-injured his foot during the Crimson Tide’s game Saturday against South Carolina. Saban had already indicated that he would be out this weekend against Southern Miss, but the injury is worse than originally thought.
The junior starter had surgery earlier this week.
“I would say that LaBryan Ray is probably going to be out for at least six weeks,” Saban said. “And then it will be how does he respond to treatment and therapy and all that type of thing, so I would say — I’m not saying he’s gonna be back playing in six weeks — I’m just saying I know he’ll be six weeks before he can even start back and doing things. So we’ll just have to see how he responds.”
The six-week timetable would make the LSU game on Nov. 9 possible, but probably not likely.
Saban also gave an update on Alfano, the freshman defensive lineman who Saban said “disappeared” last week.
Alfano’s parents released an explanation from their joint Twitter account last Friday, stating that he had stopped going to practice and classes due to his grandmother falling ill.
However, he had yet to return to the team.
“Well I don’t really know much about that,” Saban said. “I just know that the guy basically quit. He quit going to class, he quit coming here. We tried to encourage him, tried to help him, tried to set up counseling sessions with him to help him every way we could and all those things are still available to him if he wants them, but he didn’t respond to any of the things so until he responds you just to assume the guy quit.”
Alfano was a consensus 5-star prospect, rated the No. 1 prospect on the Top247 and the No. 5 recruit on the Rivals 100 list.
