Mark Pope on Brandon Garrison's benching: 'We just have a lot of growing that we have to do'

Kentucky beat NC Central by 36 points tonight, 103-67, but you wouldn’t know it from Mark Pope’s postgame press conference. Pope looked like he did after losses, somber and hoarse, but underneath that was anger. Neither Jaland Lowe nor Kam Williams played in the first half, one day after fans at the BBN United practice saw them running stairs. After a turnover in the first half, Brandon Garrison did not play in the second.

“We just have a standard we have to live up to, and we’re not, and we have to,” Pope said when asked if he was sending a message to some of his players tonight. “So, we keep fighting until we do.”

With eight minutes to go in the first half, Garrison had the ball stripped from him and didn’t run back on defense. After NC Central’s Kyric Davis dunked it on the other end to cut Kentucky’s lead to eight, Pope called a timeout and immediately lit into Brandon Garrison, walking out to meet him on the court and still talking to him when TV cameras returned. Garrison did not play the rest of the game.

The next question Pope fielded was about Garrison and whether he was intentionally taking a tougher tone with his team.

“We just have a lot of growing that we have to do right now, 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. We’ll learn. We’re gonna learn. We’re gonna learn. We’re learning fast.”

Mark Pope was NOT happy with Brandon Garrison after turning it over, and showing no effort in getting back on defense.

Walks onto the court screaming in his face, “go sit down, go sit down”#BBN #KentuckyBasketball pic.twitter.com/TFqgbO7Lh7

— Dylan (@BigBlueDylan) December 10, 2025

After Garrison went to the bench, Kentucky went on an 18-2 run. Still, even though Kentucky led 52-31 at half, Pope was visibly upset during his UK Sports Network halftime interview, calling out his team’s defense. He was still unhappy with it after the game, telling reporters that he was disappointed with the on-ball pressure, the fouls, and the late gap help. When it comes to effort, it was better than vs. Gonzaga, but Pope says the team still has a long way to go.

“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.”

The next opportunity is just a few days away, with Indiana coming to Rupp Arena on Saturday night.