Jayden Quaintance is 'getting closer' with return 'down to days and hours -- maybe a week or so'

It’s about that time, folks. Get your popcorn ready and enjoy the show that is Jayden Quaintance, who is preparing to make his Kentucky debut nine months after undergoing surgery to repair a torn ACL. The future lottery pick has gone from walking to jogging to running and jumping, then sprinting. Now it’s about conditioning and learning his teammates within the system as the ramp-up process transitions into live game reps.

The Arizona State transfer has been a full-contact 5-on-5 participant in practice and looks good, but the full-court work begins Tuesday. That will help determine his short-term readiness with long-term results being the top priority for the Wildcats as they close out the non-conference schedule and prepare for SEC play.

“He’s getting closer. We had a long, long practice today, but it was mostly, in terms of live play, just half-court. He’s engaged in most of that, he’s flying around. Tomorrow we’ll actually cross half-court with a bunch of live stuff, and it’ll be his first time doing that,” Mark Pope said during his call-in radio show. “He’s floating around in that proximity.”

Something to keep in mind: Quaintance is 6’10.5″ and 255 pounds with freakish athleticism. Pope joked that he would already be playing if he dealt with the same injury — but only because he’s “about as fast as a sloth and I do nothing explosive whatsoever, so there’s not a lot of risk of injury.”

The sophomore forward is built like Hercules with springs in his sneakers. That takes a little more massaging when it comes to returning to game action.

“It’s not a recovery from being out for three weeks with an ankle, this is being out for nine months with a really, really serious injury,” Pope continued. “One of the things about JQ is he’s one of the most physically strong, explosive, powerful human beings that I’ve ever seen in my life — NBA, college, anywhere. With somebody that’s that explosive and that powerful and strong, he puts so much more stress on his joints just because of how explosive he is, so we’ll continue to proceed with the utmost caution, but we’re getting close.”

Just how close? Pope said before the Indiana game they were at “days and weeks more than we are the months.”

Now, we’ve added hours to that timeline — with a week seemingly being the longest fans will have to wait to see the prized portal addition make his Kentucky debut.

“I said this a couple days ago, but we’re down to days and hours — maybe a week or so, in there — not weeks and months. That’s pretty exciting,” Pope said. “I know he’s excited, I think the guys on the team are excited. It’s fun to have him on the practice floor right now.”

What can Big Blue Nation expect when that time comes, seemingly against Bellarmine, at the latest?

“We expect him to be a big, big, big, big part of what we do.”