Matt Luke shares the latest status update on offensive lineman Alex Givens
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Ole Miss opens Memphis week with the status of one of the team’s most important players still up in the air.
Following his appearance at SEC Media Days, Ole Miss announced senior offensive lineman Alex Givens had to have surgery on his lower back but remained hopeful that the team’s starting right tackle would still be able to play in the opener at Memphis.
With game week here, the plan hasn’t changed but the team won’t know if Givens is up for the challenge of competing at a high level, despite missing the entire training camp in Oxford, until later in the week.
After commenting that the majority of his roster is healthy exiting camp, Luke noted that the biggest question mark in terms of availability for the Memphis game remains the team’s starting right tackle.
“I think the biggest question mark is still Alex Givens, just trying to integrate him,” Luke said on Monday. “He’s been doing a bunch of walkthroughs, a bunch of stuff conditioning-wise, everything he can. I think he’s still going to be day-to-day at this point. Probably know more Tuesday, Wednesday, [as we] try to integrate him back into practice. So I think he’ll be day-to-day.”
Givens started all 12 games for the Rebels last fall and appeared in 10 games as a sophomore. He enters the season with some All-SEC hype but will have to get his conditioning up to Rich Rodriguez’s standard to play this weekend.
How realistic is that considering Givens missed all of training camp?
“His experience gives him a chance to do that,” Luke added. “The biggest concern is his conditioning, so we’ve been doing a lot of that, building a base so he’s not starting from ground zero. I think his experience gives him a chance to do that.”
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Michael Wayne Bratton oversees the news coverage for Saturday Down South. Michael previously worked for FOX Sports and NFL.com
