Jayden Quaintance talks about his Kentucky debut, road to recovery

It was a longtime coming for Kentucky fans to see Jayden Quaintance actually on the floor in blue and white. Quaintance, who was committed to Kentucky as part of the 2024 class, decommitted, and now is getting his chance a second time around, this time making he and BBN's dream come true.

On Satruday, we saw Quaintance on the floor with this team for the first time, and it was met with a lot of emotion. Months of hard work were finally paying off for the 6-10 big man who is widely projected as a lottery pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. After the win, Quaintance gave a shoutout to the Kentucky training staff, who have helped him all along the way to reach this point. They even stood by him during Kentucky's postgame press conference.

"This has been a long time in the making and I couldn't have been here at all without the help of the people on my right (the trainers). We've been here every day since June and working every single day, to the point where we got catch phrases and stuff to get you through every day," Quaintance said. "Coach Wells made them for us for game day to celebrate all the work we put in. Without you guys, Randy Towner, Coach Mikhail (McLean), I don't think I could have been here today." Mark Pope then added a follow-up to that statement. "I'll just add to that while we have these guys here. I've been in this game for a long time and I've worked with a lot of guys, and I've never worked with a performance team that is this dedicated."

Pope then talked about the lead-up to Quaintance's debut on Saturday. "We just don't have all a lot of data, right, so we went into this game, JQ and I and his dad and the performance team had a lot of conversations over the last seven months, and then especially over the last week just about how this rollout should go, could go, would go. I'm grateful for that whole team that gave us -- JQ and me -- they got him in a spot where we could just go feel this experience out and go figure it out. So those guys got him ready and he came in. Ton of courage. You come back from an injury like that and there is a lot of room for you to question things, but JQ is just bold and brave and fearless to the point where he makes me nervous. But it was pretty special."

What does Quaintance himself have to say about his performance and how it feels to finally be on the court with his teammates? "I felt like my condition was good. I felt like my guys had, again, prepared me really well in all the practices months leading up to now.. I felt good on the court. I felt like if I was able to have time to shine. I felt like I would make it my moment, and I felt like I did that today. ...I been a competitor my whole life. I was always raised as competing. That's all I ever wanted to do. (It was tough) watching my team go and be without me, not being able to help, just kind of be on the sidelines. But I continue to trust my guys and I feel like that trust in guys built just being here on the bench support that way showed on the court, and it kind of translated over. All my guys trusted me and we just were able to show out at a high level tonight, so I feel like it's been difficult but it's been good."

Quaintance has had a tough road in his rehab back from his ACL surgery in March, and it began paying off in his first time on the court with the Wildcats in Atlanta against St. John's, and he'll hope to keep building on the performance.