Brandon Garrison will return to Kentucky for junior season

It’s official, Big Blue Nation — BG is BACK! Brandon Garrison, who finished his debut season in Lexington averaging 5.9 points, 3.9 rebounds and 1.9 assists in 17.3 minutes per contest, has decided to return for his junior year at Kentucky.

Garrison had seven games of double-figure scoring, including a 13-point, six-rebound, two-assist, tw-steal performance vs. Troy in the NCAA Tournament.

A former McDonald’s All-American out of Oklahoma City, OK, the 6-10, 250-pound forward could have chosen to test the draft waters or enter the transfer portal. Instead, Garrison has decided to run it back for a second season under Mark Pope, expected to take over an expanded frontcourt role alongside Arizona State transfer Jayden Quaintance with the likes of Mo Dioubate, Malachi Moreno, Trent Noah and Kam Williams rounding out the frontcourt minutes — the latter two in small-ball setups.

Pope has been outspoken about Garrison’s potential and how bright his future is in basketball, ideally in Lexington. He developed and matured over the course of his sophomore year, and the hope is that he can put it all together en route to a breakthrough junior campaign with a full offseason under his belt to focus on personal growth rather than learning a new system with Amari Williams anchoring that spot in his final year of eligibility.

Now, it’s Brandon Garrison time.

“Brandon is — I’m telling you, he’s fun, right?” Pope said during the NCAA Tournament. “He’s sometimes wrong but never in doubt. And I love that about him. That’s what you want your players to be. He’s doing really special things. His float game has grown to the free throw line, his three-point game is really, really dangerous right now.

“His decisiveness on turning down decisions to get to the good one, he’s a high-level decision-maker for us. He’s got the ball in his hands. We have three cutters going at the same time and he’ll turn down, turn down, turn down, and finally choose the right one, and that’s advanced-level processing in his mind. He’s been really great.”

He went from taking zero 3-pointers in year one at Oklahoma State to taking 40 in year two at Kentucky. His rebounding dipped, but his playmaking soared — while also keeping turnovers extremely low, emerging as a versatile big rather than a plodding inside presence he was to begin his career.

Can he make the jump to superstardom the way his talent suggests is possible? We’ll be finding out with Garrison in blue and white as a junior, not anywhere else.

Welcome back, BG.