Nate Oats revealed Thursday that star freshman Brandon Miller has been nursing a groin injury since Sunday’s SEC Championship win over Texas A&M.

And it was obvious that Miller was not his usual self in Alabama’s dominant win over Texas A&M Corpus Christi Thursday. Likely as a precaution, Miller played just 19 minutes and was held scoreless by the Islanders.

Oats noted his injury following the win, stating he thinks Miller will be good to go Saturday while admitting that an injured Miller would limit the Tide. That’s probably an understatement…

“He’s obviously been our most talented, best player all year. If he’s not able to go at a hundred percent, he’s probably still a pretty good player at 75, 80 percent. Hopefully we can get him playing better than he did yesterday,” Oats said. “You know, he told me in the second half, if you don’t need to put me back in, don’t put me back in, it’s hurting. So I didn’t. But I think he’s smart enough to know if he can go or not and help us …I hope he’s good enough and healthy enough to play based on how much work him and Clark are putting in, I think he will. But it definitely would limit us. Shoot, he might be the best player in the country. It would be nice if we had him.”

Despite admitting his absence would limit what Alabama does, he’s still confident the Tide has options should the worst come to fruition. He’s just hoping it never reaches that point.

“If he can’t, the good thing about our team is we’ve got a lot of depth,” Oats said. “Nimari Burnett played great yesterday. He’s not 6’9″, but he’s got a 6’9″ wingspan. He’s been great on defense. He did an unbelievable job, as we talked about, in Houston. He did a great job on Sasser when we won at Houston…So we’ve got different options. Pray we don’t have to go to all those.”

Alabama takes on Maryland Saturday at 9:40 p.m. ET in Birmingham. The game will be broadcast on TBS.