It’s kind of surreal that this moment is finally here — Jayden Quaintance is now at 100% according to head coach, Mark Pope.
He made his season debut for the Wildcats this past Saturday against St. John’s in the CBS Classic. The game was in Atlanta, also known as “Catlanta” to many, and it was everything you could’ve hoped for. He boosted the moral of this team, be brought a dominant post presence that no other player on this team can offer, and he was that off-the-bench mid-season spark that this team desperately needed in finding their first ranked win of the season.
There was some speculation on once JQ finally returned to action, just how many minutes would he actually get? I personally didn’t think it would be over 10-12 minutes of gameplay, however, Quaintance ended up playing 17 minutes in the Wildcats’ 78-66 victory over the Red Storm.
In those seventeen minutes, Jayden proved all of the pre season hype to be everything it was cracked up to be. He nearly had a double-double in his first go as a Kentucky Wildcat, coming against a top-25 team coached by former Kentucky head basketball coach, Rick Pitino. Quaintance ended the night with 10 points (while shooting 5-7 from the field), 8 rebounds, and had 2 blocks. As a Kentucky fan, I seriously don’t know how you ask for any more than that.
Quaintance was asked in this week’s rounds of interviews if he had any butterflies or nerves going into the game, and he said not at all.
“Not really, it was mostly excitement. I have always considered myself a big-game player, I’ve always been a super competitor… Being able to show that I can do it at the highest level, against the best people, is one of the reasons why I wanted to come back so bad.”
I know Big Blue Nation would have liked to see the projected top-10 draft pick earlier in the season, especially against teams such as Gonzaga, Michigan State, and Louisville, but Mark Pope cautioned us several times saying that JQ’s injury was a “really, really serious injury” and that coming off 9 months of not playing organized basketball was a major concern for monitoring his chances of avoiding re-injury.
The Arizona State transfer turned Kentucky Wildcat talked to the media about the process of getting healthy prior to his season debut, going through the rehab process and his first 5-6 months with the program.
“Coming back from a major injury like this, it takes a lot of people. It takes a lot of pieces.” He went on to say, “I tore my ACL and meniscus. I had a fracture in my knee. It was a lot of things to come back from.”
It was just public knowledge that it was tied to an ACL tear, but not for the rest of what he mentioned.
Mark Pope brought some of the training staff out for the post game press conference, notably for being with Quaintance the entire way through his recovery. Some of those included senior athletic trainer Brandon Wells, head strength coach Randy Towner, and assistant coach Mikhail McLean.
Jayden talked a little bit about the training staff and how they’ve helped him in his recovery process.
“I had a lot of people be a part of my process, so it only feels right to shout out everybody who was with me that whole time. They’re great at what they do. They’ve been working with me since June, since I got out here. It’s been a super long process with them and you just trust that they have your best interest in mind.”
It will be interesting and exciting going forward to see what this team can do if they stay healthy with both JQ and Lowe. Before they hit a 10 day stretch of no games, today they faced the in-state Bellarmine Knights where Jaland Lowe did not play and Jayden Quaintance received only 8 minutes on the floor. It’s clear that this team is gun-shy of injuries and today was one of those games where it was near a lock to win (34+ point betting favorite), so you don’t want to chance your most valuable players if you don’t have to.
We will see plenty more from them when Kentucky returns to face the top-15 ranked Alabama Crimson Tide, on the road, on January 3rd. That game tips off at 12:00 PM ET.
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