‘The fans don’t see BG every day’: Kentucky players celebrate Garrison’s big game
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Garrison, a long-time nonstarter, sparked Kentucky in SEC tourney win.
- Coaches and teammates praised his energy, rebounds and hustle.
- His performance provided momentum for Kentucky before the 2026 NCAA Tournament.
Before this Kentucky basketball postseason even began, Mikhail McLean sat at a table in a room not far from the team’s practice court and talked at length about the importance of Brandon Garrison.
The UK assistant coach acknowledged that this hadn’t been the season that everyone connected to the program thought it would be. There were more losses than anticipated. There was more adversity, too. That was true of the Cats as a team. It was true of Garrison as an individual.
The backup center to Amari Williams as a sophomore last season, Garrison came into year two at Kentucky — year three in college basketball — as the presumed starter at the 5 spot. And that’s the role he played for the first five games, a stretch that included losses to Louisville and Michigan State, an underwhelming start to the season for both Garrison and his team.
The 6-foot-10 center started those five games, and he hasn’t started since. Following UK’s loss to Michigan State nearly four months ago, Mark Pope sent Garrison to the bench in favor of freshman big man Malachi Moreno. And Garrison has been coming off the bench ever since.
“I don’t know if he felt, like, the pressure of being the starting 5 at Kentucky going into his junior season. But he just didn’t play unlocked early in the year,” McLean told the Herald-Leader last week. “And BG is at his best when he’s like slapping the ball out of someone’s hands and clapping his hands in their face and doing this stuff. BG is at his best when he’s just a menace.
“And he had a stretch of the season where he just seemed jammed up. And I felt like that was really a lot of our team. I don’t know if it was the pressure of trying to do something with the talent that we had. I wouldn’t say it was a chemistry thing, but — just as a team — we weren’t fully unlocked yet. And I think BG got a lot of the blame for a lot of our performance issues early, but it really wasn’t only him. And he’s fully unlocked now, and he’s having a really good stretch the last month of the season.”
The best, it turns out, was only a few days away.
In the first game of this 2026 postseason, Garrison was a revelation, tallying 17 points, five rebounds, two blocks and two steals in UK’s 87-82 win over LSU in the SEC Tournament on Wednesday.
In a game the Cats sorely needed to claw back a little momentum heading into Selection Sunday and next week’s NCAA Tournament, their most scrutinized player delivered.
Moreno picked up two fouls before the first TV timeout of the game and took a knock to the head in the second half. Garrison filled in brilliantly in his absence.
In the first half, he hit a jumper to get going about a minute after checking in and impacted the flow of the game with ample energy on both sides of the ball. In the second half — with the Cats clinging to a 65-64 lead — he nailed back-to-back 3-pointers and came up with a steal that led to two more Kentucky points, doing all of that in a span of 59 seconds to send UK on its way to victory.
“We needed it,” said sophomore guard Collin Chandler. “We kept saying, ‘We’re gonna make a run. Let’s keep going. We’re gonna make a run.’ And he sparked it. He almost took it upon himself to make that run. And it was so valuable.”
Chandler knew Garrison had it in him. McLean did, too. So did Pope, along with everyone else in the UK locker room.
It’s no secret there that Garrison isn’t the favorite player of every Kentucky basketball fan. But spend any time around this team, and it quickly becomes clear that he’s respected within the program.
Coaches, players and support staff go out of their way to stick up for him, as sure a sign as any of his value within the team. It’s also a sign that they see the criticism that comes Garrison’s way, and there’s been plenty of that ever since he arrived in Lexington nearly two years ago.
Garrison’s game often isn’t pretty. His time at UK has been filled with ugly possessions, careless turnovers and defensive lapses. Many of those mishaps have been so loud that — to McLean’s point — fans direct the bulk of their ire at him when, in fact, there’s plenty of blame to go around.
But look at the bigger picture, and Garrison has been playing some pretty good ball in recent weeks. McLean, who works with UK’s bigs, noted that Garrison’s best game of the season came in a win over Oklahoma on Feb. 4, when he tallied 20 points, 11 rebounds and three assists.
And the UK assistant said Garrison’s most consistent effort on both sides of the ball came in the team’s loss at Texas A&M just last week. Even amid the tough times, he’s played hard, coming up with rebounds and 50/50 balls, spurring on his teammates with energy plays.
In other words, Garrison is playing the role he’s been asked to play down the stretch, even though it isn’t the one he expected to fill when this season began.
“It’s hard, when you get moved around in the lineups,” said UK star Otega Oweh, who led the Cats with 23 points Wednesday. “And it may take a shot to your confidence. But BG is a strong individual, mentally, so he didn’t let it shake him. And that’s big, because you never know when you’re going to be in the lineup or when you’re not. But you can always dictate how you play. And I feel like he’s doing a good job of just being mature and being a good basketball player.”
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Garrison’s presence gave UK the lift it needed in the SEC Tournament opener. Without his performance, the Cats might have been bounced early. But he didn’t let that happen.
After the game, Garrison sat in the middle of the Kentucky locker room, a smile on his face and his right foot resting in a giant cooler filled with ice water. He was actually listed on the team’s injury report Tuesday night — a “little” ankle sprain, he said — but he was feeling good Wednesday afternoon.
“You know, shots were going in today,” he said. “You’re gonna have days where they don’t go in. You can’t control that. You can control your energy. And I feel like I had great energy today.”
The energy in the first half kept Kentucky going. His all-around play in the second half sent the Cats to the win.
The key sequence came with those back-to-back 3-pointers. Garrison made the first one to put the Cats ahead 68-64 with 10:41 left. The pro-UK crowd in Nashville stirred. Once the Cats got settled in on the other end of the court, Garrison started waving his arms up and down while playing defense in the post, imploring the Kentucky fans to get even louder.
The Cats got a stop, Garrison hit the second 3, and the place erupted. Kentucky’s backup big ran back on defense — “Let’s go! Let’s go!” he yelled to UK fans sitting courtside — and LSU coach Matt McMahon immediately signaled for a timeout.
At that moment, Garrison’s teammates and coaches — even the graduate assistants and some other staff members — poured onto the court to join him in celebration, a moment of catharsis for every Cat on the floor. They all wanted to be part of this moment, because they knew how hard he had worked to make it happen.
“He didn’t put his head down,” said senior guard Denzel Aberdeen. “… He knew he had to come off the bench and give 110% energy, and that’s what he’s been doing throughout the whole year. He’s been coming in and giving 110%, and the game gives back to you. So you saw what he did today. I’m very proud of him.”
Garrison might’ve thought he was going to be Amari Williams 2.0 coming into the season, another big who plays like a point guard on the perimeter and makes things happen all over the court. There have been flashes of that, but his game is different. And so is his role on this team.
Kentucky’s coaches need Garrison to be the energy guy. The player who goes all out on every possession. The 245-pound wrecking ball who isn’t afraid to mix it up with the biggest and baddest that the SEC has to offer.
Garrison thought he would be a starter on a team that made a magical run. He’s not starting. This season hasn’t been magical. But he’s still getting a chance, and this season isn’t finished.
Once he was pulled from the lineup, Garrison was disappointed, but he said he didn’t want to be “a bad teammate” just because things didn’t break his way.
“We had talks. I had talks with Pope. I had talks with my inner circle,” he said. “It just happens, you know. It’s just adversity. I didn’t let it get to me. So I feel like I’ve been handling it well. … But I really don’t worry about starting. I just worry about, when I step on the floor, that’s what I control. So I can control what I can control.”
That’s the mentality that Kentucky’s other players have recognized these past few months.
“That’s a hard part of basketball is the mental side of it, and I don’t think anybody actually knows exactly what BG has gone through — the kind of season that it’s been for him — and can really empathize with him,” Chandler said. “But we can watch what he’s done with that — what he’s done with adversity that he’s faced — and so that’s why we love BG. That’s why he’s so great to have on our team.”
Chandler was teammates with Garrison last season, too. He’s seen some of the stuff people have said on social media, but he wasn’t aware that some fans — in Rupp Arena all season, in Nashville on Wednesday — groan when it looks like his teammate is going to let one fly from 3-point range. Chandler heard that after Wednesday’s game and was clearly bothered.
“The fans don’t see BG every day. They don’t see what he does. They don’t see behind the scenes. They don’t spend countless hours with him,” he said. “And so for people that have spent those hours with him, we know how valuable he is as a player, and how good of a player he is and what he’s capable of. And I think fans have seen it. But it’s a matter of empowering him to do what BG does well. He’s a terrific basketball player that we’re grateful to have.”
Pope used words like “tremendous” and “terrific” and “special” to describe his performance against LSU. Garrison, who hadn’t made a 3-pointer since UK’s 35-point to Gonzaga on Dec. 5, went 7 for 9 from the field Wednesday, and Pope said his favorite play of the game was one of the two misses.
On that one — the Cats clinging to a 64-62 lead midway through the second half — Garrison worked hard for positioning down low, created space and found himself wide open for a two-handed dunk. It clanged off the rim. One of those shake-your-head plays that drives Kentucky fans crazy.
But, this time, his body never stopped moving. He grabbed his own rebound, went up again, and got fouled. “When BG is operating like that, when he’s that physical and intentional, he’s special,” Pope said. “… He was a huge factor for us in this game.”
That’s what Kentucky needs from its backup big man in March. And even if this season hasn’t gone the way anyone wanted it to, that’s what those around Garrison have come to expect.
“He’s just somebody that’s like a steady force,” McLean said. “He really loves his teammates, man. Like, he really works hard for his guys. And he wants to win just as bad as anybody else.”
This story was originally published March 11, 2026 at 6:12 PM.
