Nunge Expects To Be Ready For Season

The 6-foot-11 forward tore his right ACL in Iowa’s fifth game of the 2019-20 season.

Jack Nunge’s return to Iowa’s lineup for the 2019-20 season didn’t last very long.

The 6-foot-11 forward tore his right ACL in the team’s fifth game of the regular season. After a somewhat surprising decision to redshirt his sophomore year despite starting 14 games as a freshman, this meant Nunge would be spending the remainder of the season as a spectator for the second consecutive year.

“I sat out sophomore year to try and work on myself and try to do things that I knew I needed to get better at,” Nunge said. “Coming into last year I was just ready to show all the work that I put in. So it was difficult.”

Like Nunge, Iowa coach Fran McCaffery suffered a season-ending injury after sitting out a year in his college playing days. McCaffery watched Penn advance to the Final Four in 1979 from the bench after transferring to the school.

The following season, McCaffery appeared in only four games before tearing his achilles tendon.

“Coach McCaffery came up to me at first, and he kind of gave me a situation where he was in the same place,” Nunge said. “He gave me his perspective, and that helped me a lot. Especially coming from your coach, he helped me calm down and see the rest of my career ahead of me.”

The ACL tear, Nunge said, was the first major injury he’s ever sustained.

The Newburgh, Ind., native underwent surgery three weeks following his injury on Nov. 24 against Cal Poly. Within a couple weeks, Nunge said he was already doing leg exercises to begin his rehab.

Currently, Nunge said he’s feeling good physically and may even be a little ahead of where his doctors expected him to be at this point.

Although he’s not back on the court yet, Nunge said he started running and doing some change-of-direction drills last week — which was an adjustment.

“I’d say the most challenging part is just getting back to where I was at,” Nunge said. “When I could finally start running again, it would just feel weird because I haven’t done it in months. So I’m still improving on that and trying to gain more confidence in that. Just trusting my knee and knowing that even if it’s sore a little bit, that’s good for it.”

Nunge said he doesn’t have a target date in mind for when he’ll be back competing in five-on-five in practice. He said it’s likely something that will be re-assessed following Iowa’s summer practice session.

As far as if he’ll be back for the start of the season, Nunge has no doubts.

“I had surgery in mid-December, the season starts in November,” Nunge said. “That’s 11 months. Plenty of time for me to get ready.”

On May 12, Nunge had his hardship waiver approved by the NCAA, leaving him with three years of college eligibility remaining.

Before his injury, Nunge continued to improve as his redshirt sophomore season went on. He recorded his first career double-double in Iowa's third game of last season against Oral Roberts after scoring a combined two points in the Hawkeyes’ first two games.

Appearing in only five games in the past two seasons, Nunge will have to re-adjust to an in-game atmosphere.

“Even last year (following his redshirt season) it took me a couple games to get back and adjusted to playing someone other than Luka (Garza) every day,” Nunge said. “This year we have a pretty diverse team and they’ll help prepare me. Knowing how last year went, I’ll be able to better prepare myself going into this year.”

There are still questions surrounding the upcoming men’s basketball season, and fall sports in general, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Nunge said the team is preparing as if the season will be played. He is also preparing to serve multiple roles for the Hawkeyes. In his career so far, Nunge has both started for Iowa and come off the bench as a rotational player.

Given the team’s depth, Nunge said he’s comfortable doing either.

“I’m just going to go into next year and do whatever the team needs, whether it’s starting or coming off the bench,” Nunge said. “As a veteran guy, I think I’m someone we can rely on to do whatever needs to be done depending on the situation. Whether it’s a team we’re playing that has two bigs and I need to start, or a team that plays small ball and I come off the bench. It’s not going to matter to me. I just want to get the win.”