Iowa announces Ava Jones will medically retire from basketball, remain on scholarship

Iowa sophomore forward Ava Jones has been forced to medically retire from basketball, Iowa announced on Friday.

Jones is taking a medical disqualification after consulting with team doctors and athletic trainers, Iowa head coach Jan Jensen announced in a statement.

Ava Jones was not cleared to play last season and now her career has come to an end. She will remain on scholarship and will continue to attend Iowa.

“We wish Ava the best on the road to recovery and fully support the decision she made to step away from the game,” Jan Jensen said in a statement. “She worked tirelessly to get to this point, but she made the best decision for herself and her well-being.”

Ava Jones has been working to get back to full health since being struck by an impaired driver in July of 2022. The incident happened two days after she committed to play for the Hawkeyes, according to Hawk Central.

Per the report, Jones was struck by an impaired driver in Louisville, Kentucky. She reportedly suffered a brain injury, a broken collarbone and injured both knees in the accident. Her father Trey Jones also died in the incident, according to Hawk Central.

Ava Jones committed to Iowa after attending Nickerson High School in Nickerson, Kansas. She averaged 20.8 points and 15.4 rebounds per game as a senior in high school. Jones was ranked as a top-100 recruit in the country coming out of high school.

Jan Jensen provides her vision for Iowa women’s basketball as head coach

Jan Jensen has some big shoes to fill as she enters her first season as the head women’s basketball coach at Iowa.

Jensen has been right next to Lisa Bluder on the bench for her entire tenure in Iowa City — so she knows what success looks like. Given her familiarity with the program, similar success is expected from Jensen, despite never holding a head coaching job across four decades in the industry.

Now that she has the keys to the kingdom, it’s up to her to carve out her own legacy as a coach apart from Bluder. What that looks like remains to be seen.

“I haven’t had time to sit down and look at your short-term goals and your long-term goals, which I will, and I don’t always share those publicly, just like sometimes we don’t always share what the team does because you can put it out there and when you come up short you get hammered,” Jensen said at her introductory press conference. “Sometimes that is within house. But I think when you’re chasing greatness, you want to be a champion.

“I mean, I don’t think there’s been one season, I don’t care how much we’ve rebuilt, where we’ve gone in there and said, let’s just try to finish fifth this year. I’m not wired like that.”

Jensen wants to be the champion of the Big Ten Conference on a yearly basis. And she wouldn’t have taken the job if she didn’t believe in her abilities as a coach. She didn’t want to start the so-called coach speak this early into her tenure — but she thinks Iowa has some big-time players expected to be on the roster next season.

“I want to chase greatness,” she continued. “My expectations of the players are going to — they’ve been to back-to-back-to-back conference tournament championships. They’ve been to back-to-back national championship games. I’d like to think they’re coming in with a mentality, little chip on their shoulder, because most everybody else is going to say, hey, you lost all that.

“I’d say I’m not shying away to be great.”