Kentucky Basketball Lands Surprise Oklahoma State Transfer

Mark Pope landed arguably the biggest addition of his young tenure at Kentucky so far as Kentucky picked up a commitment from Oklahoma State transfer center Brandon Garrison on Tuesday morning.

Garrison, a Del City, Ok native, is one of the top players in the transfer portal. 247 ranks him as the No. 21 overall player and No. 4 ranked center in the portal. On3 ranks him as the No. 45 player overall and the 8th ranked center. He was listed as 6'11, 245 pounds on Oklahoma State's website.

What made this commitment pretty shocking is that Garrison committed to the Wildcats without taking a visit to Lexington.

Garrison averaged 7.5 PPG, 5.3 RPG, and 1.5 BPG on 57.2% shooting this past year in his Freshman season at Oklahoma State. He appeared in 32 games, making 29 starts, while playing 22.7 minutes per contest.

Garrison was a highly ranked High School recruit this time last year, which is part of what makes him such a big get for Kentucky. Garrison was a McDonald's All-American last year and ranked as the No. 45 overall player in the 2023 class according to 247 and as the No. 63 overall recruit according to On3. They both ranked him as a top 8 center in the HS class.

Out of HS, Garrison was noted as being a physical player with good footwork.

While there are still a lot of moving parts when it comes to Kentucky's roster due to the coaching change, Mark Pope has been active in the transfer portal. Garrison is Kentucky's 5th transfer portal addition so far.

Garrison joins Lamont Butler Jr. (San Diego State), Andrew Carr (Wake Forest), Otega Oweh (Oklahoma), and Amari Williams (Drexel) in the portal class so far. That group is currently a top 5 portal class according to 247. Williams is a top 50 player in the portal according to On3, while Oweh is a top 50 player according to 247. Both players are top 100 players in the portal according to both.