Mark Pope addresses benching Brandon Garrison: 'We have a lot of growing we have to do'

Kentucky coach Mark Pope was downright serious in his press conference after a 103-67 win over NC Central. He wanted his tone to convey the urgency of the issue to guys like Brandon Garrison.

Because the Wildcats have work to do. That much is clear, even after a lopsided win.

“We just have a lot of growing that we have to do right now,” Pope said when asked about benching Garrison during the game. “And we’ll grow. We have good guys. We have competitive guys. We don’t know, really, what it means to compete yet, which is terrifying. But we will learn. We’re gonna learn. We’re gonna learn. We’re gonna learn fast.”

Pope did what he could to teach Brandon Garrison a real-time lesson, it appeared. During the game, Garrison turned the ball over late in the first half.

He had the ball stripped from him, then Garrison compounded the issue by not running back on defense. NC Central dunked it on the ensuing possession and Pope immediately called timeout and began torching Garrison.

Not acceptable. Brandon Garrison didn’t play the rest of the game.

For all his coaching so far this season, though, Pope has yet to see the kind of bang for his buck he’s been hoping for. Kentucky is just too inconsistent right now.

“It hasn’t translated yet,” Pope said of the competitive fire he talked about over the summer. “But it will. ‘Yet’ is a powerful word, guys. It is the best word in the English language. It’s three letters that are super powerful, and it hasn’t translated yet, but it will.

“That competitive spirit, man, I’ve done a poor job of getting that out of our guys in games, which is monumentally frustrating for me, but we’ll get it out. We’re going to find it, or we’re going to die trying.

“We’ve got to get guys outside of themselves, and we got to get guys living and dying for this team and this gym with this fanbase, and in these games and in competitive games, when things go bad, we have to be able to tap into that, and so far, I’ve done a poor job eliciting that from our guys to nobody’s more surprised about that than I, but that’s not gonna stand.”

Brandon Garrison and the Kentucky Wildcats will return to action on Saturday against Indiana. The game will tip off at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.