'It gave me chills': Josiah-Jordan James describes finally making return for Tennessee

Zakai Zeigler was having flashbacks Tuesday night at Thompson-Boling Arena. Tennessee’s sophomore point guard drove baseline, threw a lob to Josiah-Jordan James and watched the all-everything senior wing explode above the rim to finish the sequence with a two-hand dunk.

The home crowd erupted and Zeigler was transported back to last season, when James had a similar slam against Arizona.

“When he got that big dunk and everybody started going crazy,” Zeigler said. “It feels really good for him to be back. That’s my brother right there. I’m just happy for him to be back on the court playing.”

James was back on the court in No. 8 Tennessee’s 87-53 win over Mississippi State after missing the last four games, and eight of the first 13 this season, due to nagging knee soreness. He scored eight points and had four assists in 17 minutes, playing for the first time since December 7.

Lately, though, James has been giving everyone flashbacks.

“The last couple days,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said, “since he’s been in practice, he’s been the Josiah we know he can be.”

James credited the comeback — he played the first three games of the season, missed four in a row, played two more then missed another four straight — to a change in medication. 

“I’ve been on it for about three or four days now,” James said. “It’s definitely just helped with the pain. I haven’t felt any pain since three or four days ago when I got on the new medicine so hopefully we just keep moving forward and keep treatment up right now.”

James missed his first two shots from the field Tuesday, then made his next three, finishing 3-for-5 from the field, including 2-for-2 from the 3-point line. 

Barnes said the plan was to play James between 15 and 20 minutes, avoiding long stretches of consecutive minutes on the floor. He was a full participant for the first half of Monday’s practice at Thompson-Boling, before moving on to individual work on the side.

“The thing we’ll have to keep working with him is his cardio,” Barnes said. “It will be more difficult than people might think because we won’t try or expect him to go through a full practice yet. We’ll monitor him through practice because there’s a lot of basketball left and we want him to be at his best once we get deeper into the season.”

Up Next: No. 8 Tennessee at South Carolina, Saturday, 3:30 p.m. ET, SEC Network

What’s important for now, though, is that James has been through multiple practices and now a game without feeling the pain in his knee that he just couldn’t shake earlier in the season. 

He admitted there had been ”a lot of dark days” when previous attempts at treatment weren’t working.

“Because the first time (I came back), like coach said, I wasn’t 100 percent or I don’t feel like anywhere close to it,” James said, “so we had to go back to the drawing board and get back to square one. I feel like we just broke everything down. 

“Chad and ‘G,’” he added, referencing team trainer Chad Newman and strength coach Garrett Medenwald, “we took a completely different approach and I feel like it helped out a lot. Hopefully, we can just keep moving forward. This approach was definitely different from the last ones and I feel 1,000 times better than I did before.”

James said he knew he was feeling like his old self when he was “bouncy” during pregame layup lines Tuesday.

“Sometimes it was kind of like the landing part that would trigger it” James said, “and upset my knee. And it felt good (before the game), so I knew tonight that I was going to be fine in terms of my knee in warmups.”

He received a loud ovation when he checked into the game with 15:14 left in the first half — “To be greeted like I was today was hard to describe,” James said, “it gave me chills” — then showed off the bounce when Zeigler threw the baseline lob, releasing all of the frustrations he had bottled up while trying to get his knee right.

“After I dunked the ball,” James said, “it was just a lot of emotion.”