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Kentucky basketball is one month and a day away from the start of the 2025-2026 regular season. Head coach Mark Pope is heading into his second year leading the program and while he has several new faces on the roster, he and his staff were able to retain quite a few players from last year’s […]

Kentucky basketball is one month and a day away from the start of the 2025-2026 regular season.

Head coach Mark Pope is heading into his second year leading the program and while he has several new faces on the roster, he and his staff were able to retain quite a few players from last year’s team.

This season’s squad is looked at to be relatively deep and could very well execute a platoon-like system that Big Blue Nation saw in 2014-2015 when John Calipari’s Wildcats went 38-1.

While there’s a lot of basketball to be played before we can truly judge just how good these Wildcats are and will be, it’s not too early to speculate just who might be the most important player for Kentucky this season.

A quick assumption would jump to Jayden Quaintance or Otega Oweh with both being high profile stars with freakish athletic ability.

However, CBS Sports CBB insider Jon Rothstein is going with Brandon Garrison as the team’s most important player heading into this season.

He cites Quaintance’s health as one of the main reasons Garrison’s play is so critical to his team’s success and added that Pope expects Garrison to make a massive jump in year two of being in the offense.

It’s no secret that Garrison is incredibly talented and also showed last season that his emotions can flare up from time to time.

A second year in Lexington and more continuity with not only this coaching staff but also his teammates should provide Garrison all of the opportunity in the world to step up and be a leader this season.