Photos and Video from Alabama Basketball's First Preseason Practice
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama men's basketball hosted its first official preseason practice on Monday morning in preparation for the upcoming 2022-23 season.
The two-hour practice was held at the team's training facility adjacent to Coleman Coliseum. According to head coach Nate Oats, every player on the roster was available to practice except for senior guard Jahvon Quinerly, who is still recovering from a torn ACL that he suffered in the Crimson Tide's first and only game in last year's NCAA Tournament.
During his meeting with the media, Oats also gave his thoughts on the team after its first practice.
“We just finished up our first one,” Oats said. “We had the four hours a week of instruction (in the summer for the team's European Tour). Some of those have been full-team practices, so we’ve gotten a little bit. It’s not like it used to be back in the day where it’s the first time you get together at all, but it’s the first time we’ve had the full time slot. I thought it was good. Our guys went hard. In the first week of practice, you like to just establish their effort. We really tried to focus on some defensive stuff. Our defense has to improve a lot from last year. If we can get back to like it was in Year 2, I think we’ve got a chance to win a lot of games, compete for a championship. If it was like last year, we’re not gonna compete for anything. That’s gonna be our main focus these first couple of weeks.
“If we can get our defense established and get our effort established and get guys to just play together, we’ll have a great first two weeks. The offense will come. We’ve got some talented players. It’s a big part of our offense is we can count on being unselfish. I thought it was good today. Guys really competed. We literally just finished up less than five minutes ago. I was happy with the effort. We don’t play a game for six weeks, so with six weeks, you get 30 practices. We like to go watch some NBA training camps. We’re actually not gonna practice again until Thursday so that all the coaching staff can get out, watch some training camps and do some recruiting now. So Practice 1 is today, Thursday is 2 and Friday will be 3. We’ll get three in here this week before Friday.”
Gallery: Alabama Basketball Conducts First Preseason Practice of 2022-23
Images courtesy of Alabama Athletics
