Jayden Quaintance injury update: Mark Pope provides latest timeline entering 'important' three weeks

As Kentucky comes out of summer practice, the work hasn’t stopped for Jayden Quaintance. That’s with the next month apparently being crucial in the rehab of his ACL going into this season.

Mark Pope shared the latest update on Quaintance’s recovery during an hour-long interview on ‘Eye on College Basketball’ with CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander on Thursday. He emphasized the Wildcats’ desire for him to be completely healthy when he retakes the floor and how that could affect when he makes his season debut. However, Quaintance is entering “a really important, three-week space” where the team will be increasing his workload in the weight room going into the start of the semester.

“Listen, it’s really important that he gets a full recovery, so it’s going to be a little while…I have every expectation that he’ll play this season. I don’t think he’s going to play all the games this season, but we’ll see,” Pope said. “Like, he’s made great progress and he’s kind of crossing off the benchmarks as he goes. He’s in a really important, three-week space for him right now where it’s the first time we get to his strength training head-on. He’s still not doing anything live-ish or even close to it, but we’re really going strength heavy, heavy, heavy the next three weeks. So we’ll see how these three weeks go.

“Maybe-ish,” Pope said of their hope, but with no guarantee that Quaintance would be ready to play by the end of November. “Maybe-ish.”

Quaintance, spending his freshman season last year at Arizona State, tore his ACL on February 23rd and waited to have surgery until March 19th. The procedure and recovery time for this knee injury have advanced, but still, that’s a quick turnaround. That, despite his progress over the summer, has led to expectations that he could at least miss the first handful of games of the season for UK.

That said, Kentucky is being cautious because of Quaintance’s importance to the year. This is a young prospect who posted 9.4 points (52.5% FG), 7.9 rebounds, 2.6 blocks, 1.5 assists, and 1.1 steals per game, as one of the top freshmen and overall defenders in the country last season in Tempe before transferring this offseason to Lexington. That, paired with his physical traits, has him projected as a top pick in the NBA Draft.

“We have some work to do on him,” Pope said. “Here’s the problem, okay…The problem is, when he plays the game of basketball, he just runs over everybody. This guy is a physical specimen like you haven’t seen before.

“His hands are so big, and he’s so strong? I don’t know if you’re going to be able to relate to this. This is super embarrassing for me to say as a coach. But, like, you know, he’s been working so hard on his free throws, made incredible progress. Went from being like a 48% free-throw shooter last season, to week seven, he was over 80% from the free-throw line on 150 free throws a day – made incredible progress. So, every time he shoots, like, we’ll go celebrate and I give him five. And now, it’s like, I can’t let anybody see it, but it hurts so bad when this kid just gives you a natural high-five. But I can’t show it because I’ve got to be a tough guy.”

Big Blue Nation will continue to pay attention to Quaintance’s status over the next ten to twelve weeks before the season starts for the Wildcats. This next month sounds specifically crucial, though, in determining when he could be ready to play for Kentucky.