Jaelin Llewellyn reveals the toughest part of his injury recovery last season

There were high expectations for Jaelin Llewellyn heading into 2022 as the three-year starter at Princeton took his talents to the University of Michigan. But after starting the first eight games of the seasons, Llewellyn suffered a torn ACL that would put an early end to his inaugural season with the Wolverines.

Llewellyn has been on the road to recovery ever since, and recently spoke on the ‘Defend the Block‘ podcast with Jon Jensen about the biggest challenge in that process.

“I think it was probably the fact that it’s been my second major injury, and it’s hard to go through this stuff mentally as well as physically,” Llewellyn said. “And going through it the first time, was kind of like I’m not even sure I can do this again, and when it happens again it’s hard to deal with mentally.”

In discussion, the physical side often overshadows the difficult mental side that comes with sustaining injuries. But Llewellyn pushed through the tough times and used the Wolverines’ season as motivation to return to the floor.

“But you get through those harder days and you have really good ones too where you see a lot of improvement. And just with our season not ending the way we wanted to, I wanted to be able to put myself in a position to help the team in any way achieve the goals that we set out,” Llewellyn said.

Llewellyn may have already been through one serious injury, but admitted that there were others that he had to lean on to push through his difficult recovery.

“Definitely Chris Williams, a trainer, and his intern Charlie. They’ve been like my best friends throughout this, I see them every single day for the past couple months, and on days when it’s been bad,” Llewellyn said. “These injuries happen and a lot of the time people only want to talk about the injury and they give me a space to just talk about other stuff, and what I’m going to do after treatment, and what shows they’re watching, and just the day to day stuff to get me through the harder days.”

Llewellyn was ranked the No. 19 point guard and the No. 79 overall player in the 2022 transfer portal cycle according to On3’s College Basketball Transfer Portal Top Player Rankings. He averaged 15 points and four rebounds per game in his previous two seasons at Princeton, scoring in double figures twice during his eight games last season.

The graduate transfer did not expect to be coming back for a second season in Ann Arbor, but expressed gratitude for the opportunity to return for another final season and is taking steps in the right direction to be healthy for the Wolverines next season.