"Can I Keep the Rib?" Jason Jakstys and the Comeback Nobody Saw

Every Illinois fan knows Mirkovic, Stojakovic, and the Ivisic twins. Fewer could tell you much about No. 31, the 6-foot-10 kid from Yorkville who spent last season's Final Four run on the bench in street clothes. That's a shame, because Jason Jakstys might have the best story on the roster.

Last January, a blood clot ended his season in about three days. Doctors fixed it by taking out one of his ribs. Eight months later, he's healthy, cleared, and Brad Underwood is talking about him like a guy who's going to matter.

So for the first entry in our player-by-player series, let's start with the guy who's had to wait the longest.

An Illini Fan Before He Was an Illini

Jakstys didn't have to be sold on Illinois. His dad, Tom, grew up in Champaign and played college ball at Illinois Wesleyan. Jason has said that when sports were on TV in the Jakstys house, it was basically always the Illini. He's got two older brothers, Jake and Justin, and a younger brother, Joey, so you can imagine the driveway games.

He wasn't a can't-miss prospect. His freshman season at Yorkville was wiped out by COVID quarantines. He didn't have a single Division I offer until Illinois State came calling in February of his junior year. Then came a big spring and summer, and Illinois offered after watching him at the Riverside Brookfield Summer Shootout in June 2023. He committed that July, picking the Illini over a list of mid-majors that included Drake, Indiana State, Penn, and Yale.

At Yorkville, coach John Holakovsky used him as much more than a big body. With a roster full of football players and not much perimeter skill, the Foxes ran offense through Jakstys in the high post, letting him handle dribble handoffs, attack off the bounce, and grab rebounds and lead the break himself. As a junior he helped Yorkville tie a program record with 26 wins. As a senior he put up 16 points and 9 rebounds a night, made third-team All-State, and joined the school's 1,000-point club.

The Long Runway

Everybody knew Jakstys was a development project. Even at commitment, scouts said a redshirt year might help, and that's exactly what happened. He sat out 2024-25 to put on weight and strength with strength coach Adam Fletcher.

In 2025-26, as a redshirt freshman, he started to show something. In his first 48 minutes of the season he grabbed 17 rebounds and blocked four shots, including a nine-rebound debut. He even earned some spot minutes in the big non-conference win over Texas Tech. He didn't crack the Big Ten rotation, but he told Illini Inquirer that his weight was holding steady and that banging every day in practice with Mirkovic and the Ivisics was making him better. He also made Academic All-Big Ten.

Three Days in January

Then came January 20. Jakstys felt a strange ache in his left shoulder while sitting in class. Big Ten bigs always have something sore, so he shrugged it off and practiced. The next night he played six minutes in an 89-70 win over Maryland, but the shoulder kept getting worse during the game.

The next day in the weight room, barely lifting anything, his arm started swelling, turning red, and the veins started popping out. Athletic trainer Justin Games suspected a blood clot, though even he was skeptical because Jakstys was only 20. An ultrasound the next day confirmed it.

The diagnosis was venous thoracic outlet syndrome. In plain English: there's a pinch point between the first rib and the collarbone, and repetitive overhead motion, like a basketball player or a baseball pitcher makes, can squeeze the vein there until blood stops flowing right and clots. Only about 5 percent of thoracic outlet cases are the venous kind, and the definitive fix is removing the first rib.

Jakstys went on blood thinners right away. He then went through three procedures, including a thrombectomy to clear out the clot and the surgery to remove the rib, done by Dr. Andrew Arndt at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital. His first question, once the doctors explained it, was whether he could keep the rib. (He couldn't.)

Why He Rushed the Surgery

Here's the part I love. Jakstys asked how soon they could operate, and the reason wasn't just his own recovery. He wanted to be healthy enough to travel with the team for March Madness.

He made it. He was on the bench for the whole run: Houston, then the Final Four in Indianapolis. He couldn't play a minute of it, and Dr. Arndt admitted he felt great and terrible for him at the same time. But he was there.

The recovery went faster than anyone expected. About a week after surgery he was already restless at home. Within a month he was shooting again. By June, Northwestern Medicine was calling his prognosis excellent, and Arndt credited Jakstys' own motivation for how well he bounced back. Moving that fast also gives patients a very high chance of getting off blood thinners and staying clot-free for life.

Through all of it, Jakstys kept the same attitude. He told Illini Inquirer that his plan was to keep his head down, keep working, and trust that God had a plan for him.

What Underwood Sees Now

Underwood said in July that Jakstys was back "healthy and cleared." Then, at his preseason press conference in September, Underwood went out of his way to bring up Jakstys unprompted. He said Jakstys was going to play a lot last year before the clot hit.

Now, let's be realistic about the depth chart. In front of him are Tomislav Ivisic, Zvonimir Ivisic, and David Mirkovic, three of the best bigs in the Big Ten. Freshman Landon Davis has turned some heads too. Most analysts see Jakstys as the primary frontcourt insurance policy, not a nightly rotation guy. CBS Sports put it plainly: it would probably take an injury to open up big minutes for him.

But here's the thing. Tomislav Ivisic has missed multiple games in back-to-back seasons. And with Mirkovic still working back from his own foot surgery, an elite-defending, rim-protecting 6-10 big who knows the system isn't a luxury in November. It might be a necessity.

The Bottom Line

The good news for Jakstys is that time is on his side. Under the NCAA's new five-year eligibility rules, 247Sports reports he still has three seasons left starting this one. The thing he needs to add is offense. Illini Inquirer has noted his offensive game has to grow before he's a full-time Big Ten rotation player. But the stuff Underwood values most from a backup big, defending, rebounding, and protecting the rim, is already there.

Three years ago he was a three-star kid with mid-major offers. Last January he lost a rib and a season in the same week. Now he's healthy, his head coach is calling him elite at the things that win games, and he's one bad break away from real minutes on a top-five team.

You won't see him on the posters. But when Jakstys checks in this year, give him a little extra noise. He earned it the hard way.

I-L-L. 🧡

Reporting compiled from 247Sports (Illini Inquirer), The News-Gazette, Northwestern Medicine, The Daily Illini, Sports Illustrated (Illinois on SI), CBS Sports, WCIA, The Champaign Room, the Chicago Sun-Times, Shaw Local, and FightingIllini.com.