Mark Pope is figuring out how to get the most out of Brandon Garrison

Brandon Garrison transferred to Kentucky from Oklahoma State as the high-upside guy, a former McDonald’s All-American with three 20-point games in the Big 12, but 22 games in single digits. When he flashed, the 6-10 forward was brilliant. Other times he was raw with a long journey seemingly ahead trying to find his ceiling.

He came to Lexington hoping to turn those physical tools and natural gifts into consistent production, a long-term process with a substantial payoff, potentially. Part of that, Mark Pope says, is learning what makes Garrison tick and trying to capitalize on those moments in real time, then recreating them.

A sequence they’ve got playing on a loop inside the Joe Craft Center film room? The one that likely won the game for Kentucky against Duke, racking up six points, one offensive rebound, one block and one steal in two minutes to make it a two-point game — the closest it had been since the 8:23 mark of the first half. Garrison flipped the momentum and gave the Wildcats a chance to pull off the comeback win, Pope going out of his way to praise the sophomore big man’s spark off the bench in a crucial stretch of the game.

“I was really proud with his — just in general, his energy on the floor,” he said Thursday. “Partly that is due to us learning him a little bit and learning about him in this pace, and trying to manage his early minutes versus his late minutes.”

Interestingly enough, the staff has been studying player performance to get a feel for how they’re best used on the floor and for how long, taking that data and applying it to the rotation. That’s helped them get the most out of their players, not keeping them in the game too long or too short to maximize those windows of brilliance.

Improved conditioning has helped Garrison extend his own personal window.

“We did a big study on guys and how they perform if they have a one-minute run, a two-minute run, a three-minute run, all the way up to 10 minutes,” Pope said. “Just kind of their rotational length and then where it happens in the first half, in the second half. We’ve got a little bit better vibe on that. He’s been really diligent with his conditioning, he’s doing extra conditioning. I thought he made massive, massive energy plays in the second half. They were incredible.”

It wasn’t just the flashy buckets — we all saw that jumper from the top of the key — and loading up the box score. Garrison impacted winning in multiple different areas, namely in hustle situations where he outpaced the competition and put himself in the right spots to make plays.

Sometimes that’s all it takes, and the Oklahoma State transfer showed that. He simply plays with heart.

“The loose ball that he came up with, it was way up in the air and he went and just won it in a sea of bodies. The putback that he had that was in transition where Lamont was just blistering pace down the floor and BG had the energy to run and kind of finished to clean up that one when nobody else did. He was the only guy still running,” Pope added. “He had a huge impact on this game, and it’s fun to see. I think he was really proud of himself, and he should be, because he’s been focusing on some specific things and he executed them well.”

Slowly but surely, Garrison is figuring things out and his future is undoubtedly bright.