The Return - Chapter 1

He's baaaaccckk.

After missing the entire 2024-25 season because of a knee injury he suffered during a summer scrimmage with his team, Elmarko Jackson is back in action and ready to roll for the 2025-26 season.

As he does, we’ll follow him every step of the way in the latest edition of our weekly diary series that will chronicle Jackson's red-shirt sophomore season, which we're dubbing, "The Return."

Some of what you’ll read here, in Jackson's own words, will focus on his return to form and the process — both mental and physical — of getting back into the flow with an almost-entirely-new Kansas team.

But we'll also dive into Jackson the person, the off-the-court stuff that makes him who he is, his goals, dreams, funniest moments and favorite things.

It'll all be centered around the 2025-26 Kansas basketball season, which featured the Jayhawks entering the season ranked No. 19 in the AP preseason poll and picked to finish 6th in the Big 12 Conference.

The Elmarko File

Age: 21 | Number: 13 | Height: 6-3 | Weight: 195 | Position: Guard

Hometown: Marlton, New Jersey | High School: South Kent School

Notable: A 5-star prospect and McDonald's All-American in high school, Jackson came to Kansas before the 2023-24 season as a potential impact player. He played in 34 games that year, starting half of them, and averaged 4.3 points and 1.7 assists in 18.6 minutes per game. He was solid but never quite turned the corner of making a major impact. Then the injury came that put his journey on a different path. That's nothing new for the Jersey native, who played at 3 different schools in high school and averaged between 15 and 20 points per game at all three of them. That includes tallying 19 points and 6 assists per game as a senior at South Kent in Connecticut. All of it led to Jackson being the No. 19-ranked prospect in the country per 247 Sports in the Class of 2023. He also finished ranked No. 25 by Rivals and No. 26 by ESPN.com. Jackson's background includes time on the football field and as a lacrosse player and he's still young in his basketball journey.

KU record to date: 0-0

Next up: 7 p.m. tonight vs. Green Bay at Allen Fieldhouse (ESPN+)

Jackson has said that when he went down after tearing the patellar tendon in his left knee during an open scrimmage in June of 2024 that he expected to be back in a couple of days.

“I wasn’t necessarily scared. I mean, I felt like I kind of just knocked knees with somebody and it didn’t feel like anything more serious than that. I didn’t feel anything that was crazy out of the ordinary because I’ve got a higher pain tolerance than a lot of people.”

An MRI and X-Rays revealed that the problem was more serious and that’s when it hit him. The guy who had never done anything worse than fracture his thumb during 7^th-grade basketball was all of a sudden going to be out a while.

“I was just like, ‘Damn.’ It obviously sucked just because I had put a lot of work into that offseason and was really confident in my game and so many things that I had improved upon since my freshman year.”

There were various stages of the journey and milestones that Jackson reached before returning fully, of course. And it was more than a full year from the time of the injury to his first time in a KU uniform again.

That came a couple weeks ago, when he was in Louisville, helping the Jayhawks top the Cardinals in the first of two KU scrimmages.

Before that, though, came Late Night in the Phog, a night that held extra special meaning for Jackson in 2025. Late Night’s fun for the players every year. But Jackson said this one came with a little added emotion.

“A little bit. I was just really happy to run out of the tunnel again and just feel the energy. Last year at Late Night, I couldn’t even run out. I walked out there. And it was really good to feel that again.”

Jackson’s return to action has been full of ups and downs. And, yeah, the redshirt sophomore certainly has had his bad days. Physically. Emotionally. Mentally. And more.

“I definitely felt like that when I was home. I was bedridden for a couple weeks, which definitely sucked, but, at the same time, I got to spend more time with my family and found a way to really appreciate those types of things.”

Through it all, he maintained his faith and remained as positive as possible, finding silver linings at every turn and fighting hard to return to form.

He credited KU trainer Bill Cowgill and his physical therapy team, which included former Jayhawk guard Tyrel Reed, with helping him push hard and stay positive.

“They gave me such good energy that they made it easy to push through. I got a lot closer with them because I saw them every day. I feel like my PT went pretty good. There was about two or three days where it was just really difficult and hard to mentally push through. But I’m big on faith, so I just put my trust in God and remembered that other people are going through way worse things than that.”

For the entirety of the 2024-25 season, Jackson’s days looked like this:

• PT in the morning before practice.

• Weight lifting — upper body only, which you might’ve noticed.

• Practice, where he did his best to pick up others, bring energy and learn as much as possible even while sitting out.

• PT Round 2 in the afternoon after practice.

• Ice and stretch in the evening.

One of his favorite parts of recovery was when he and KU assistant coach Joe Dooley would hit the floor for stool shooting. It’s exactly what it sounds like, with Dooley standing by as Jackson sat on a stool from five or six spots on the floor and tried to make 50-100 shots from the seated position.

“I felt like that was pretty big for me. Obviously, there’s always something you can tweak with your shot and, right now, I feel really confident in my shot.”

“The whole journey just put a different perspective on the game for me and helped me understand how I could be more effective within the game. Scoring isn’t everything, so finding ways to do the little stuff that might not show up on the stat sheet but contributes to winning was something I really learned more about and tried to focus on.”

While he was able to return to practice in a more meaningful way by running some dummy offense stuff with the red team late in the season, Jackson considers his first real run post-surgery to be in the days leading up to KU’s first-round NCAA Tournament loss to Arkansas, when he actually was cleared to go full speed and got to play with the red team in practice.

“It felt great, man. Just to compete again, get on the floor and get after it with Diggy (Coit) was a lot of fun and it also helped me feel like I was actually helping the team.”

While his knee held up fine for those runs, he said it didn’t feel completely normal until a couple of weeks later.

“After the season, we don’t really take a lot of time off; we get right back to it. So, we did workouts and I just constantly tried to push myself to see how far I could go on my knee without getting sore. So, around that time, that’s when it finally felt right again. I was just in the gym constantly because I felt like I could not only practice again but also work out and just work on my game on my own.”

All of that brought us to this summer, when Jackson was full-go with a bunch of new teammates and started preparing all over again for the start of another season.

The recent Louisville and Fort Hays State exhibition games were big mile markers for him, too. Not because he did anything special in either game. But because he was in them.

At Louisville, he said he made sure to take a minute to soak it all in — his return to the floor for the first time in a real game.

“Of course, yeah. Of course. I talked a lot to BT (freshman Bryson Tiller) about it because he was injured, too, and we kind of went through PT together. We were down there just talking about what our journeys had been and how we were both back. We were just very conscious of where we were at and how great it was to be able to put that jersey on.”

Jackson didn’t start that game, but that allowed him even more time to take it all in, and he remembers vividly what he was thinking while sitting at the scorer’s table waiting to check in for the first time.

“Dang, it’s time. It’s time to get after it. No worries at all. A little bit of nerves just because it was my first time being back out there, but I trust the other four guys on the floor and we’re all super-competitive and ready to go.”

A week later, when Fort Hays State came to Allen Fieldhouse, Jackson was in the starting lineup, and that, too, went down as a special part of his return.

He started 17 games as a freshman and had heard his name announced in the starting lineup with Kansas plenty of times before. But this one meant a little more.

“It was super-nice. My mom got to come to the game so that was cool to hear my name again and for her to be there for that. Obviously, she liked that, as well.”

“Yeah, it was Fort Hays State and just an exhibition game, but it’s still about trying to progress and grind stuff out each and every day and get better each possession.”

He’s done great with that mindset up to this point. And now the fun begins for real with tonight’s season-opener against Green Bay at Allen Fieldhouse, where the tunnel, the crowd and the beginning of a whole new chapter await.

We'll follow him the rest of the way to keep tabs on the next stages of the return.

But while you wait for tonight's tipoff, be sure to check out this video from KU, which was released Sunday, that features a little more about Jackson's recovery process with some incredible commentary from his family, friends and more.

— For tickets to all KU athletic events, visit kuathletics.com