After getting several elite defensive pieces last week, the Kentucky Wildcats have added one the best shooters in the country to the roster, Dayton Transfer Koby Brea, he announced on social media.

Brea was originally believed to be down to Duke and UConn entering last weekend, but in the game of recruiting, things can change quickly.

Duke pulled out of the race and their visit was cancelled, putting Kentucky back in contention and taking the place of that visit. While the Huskies added another transfer guard Aidan Mahaney on Monday, just after Brea’s visit ended on Sunday, resulting in them pulling out of the race. When Brea arrived in Lexington on Monday night, the Wildcats were the clear leader and they locked it down.

Brea is ranked as the 40th-best transfer on ESPN, the 100th-best transfer on 247Sports, and according to EvanMiya, which has more of an analytical look at things, Brea is the 79th-best transfer.

What kind of person and player is Kentucky getting in Brea? Let’s dive into his background and game.

Background

Coming out of Monsignor Scanlan High School in Bronx, New York, Brea was an unranked recruit. While he wasn’t a player exploding on the Grassroots scene, both of his parents come from the Dominican Republic, making him eligible to represent the Dominican National Team in the U-17 FIBA Centrobasket Championships. There he got to play against some of the best talent in the world. Ultimately, Brea committed to Dayton over a small list of other schools such as Massachusetts, Manhattan, Iona, and Robert Morris.

As a freshman, Brea played in 16 games for Dayton, but missed much of the preseason and all of the non-conference schedule due to an injury. He never really got comfortable and because of this received a redshirt.

As a redshirt freshman, Brea had a breakout season earning A-10 Sixth Man of the Year and Most Improved Player awards, notably leading the team in three-pointers made, attempts, and percentage (42%).

After learning he had stress fractures in both tibias, Brea saw his play drop in the 2022-23 season. At that point, surgery had to be completed. “I had to learn how to walk again slowly,” Brea told the Dayton Daily News.

Fully healed in 2023-24, Brea had the best season of his college career. Playing the sixth-man role he became so comfortable in, Brea averaged career highs in points (11.1 ppg), rebounds (3.8 rpg), field goal percentage (51.2%), and three-point percentage (49.8%). In doing so, he won his second Sixth Man of the Year award and helped lead Dayton to a Top 25 ranking and their first NCAA Tournament win appearance since 2015.

Scouting Report

49.8 percent from three last season. That is the statistic that is going to jump off the page. The fifth-best three-point percentage in the country, Brea did so on 201 attempts, making him one of the most efficient shooters in the country. That number isn’t an outlier as he shot 42.3 percent in 2022-23, his only other season he did not miss time due to injuries.

That shooting ability isn’t just limited to catch-and-shoot opportunities as he is excellent at shooting off movement, whether that is coming off screens or creating for himself. To have the shooting efficiency and versatility he does, in a 6-6 frame, is very rare.

No player comes without weakness though. Brea’s two biggest are his unproven ability to get to the rim and his defense.

Shooting as well as he does, Brea doesn’t look to go inside often, with only nine percent of his attempts coming at the rim. At 6-6, he has the size, but he lacks some athleticism and quickness to get by more athletic defenders. That also hurts him on the defensive end, ranking 135th in EvanMiya’s defensive rating, amongst all transfers. Interestingly, Kentucky transfer target Jaxon Robinson is just below him at 136th.

In Brea, Kentucky is getting a proven shooter with a good frame and four years of college experience.

Take a look at the newest Wildcat below.

Also published on A Sea of Blue.

While Mark Pope has been focusing on bringing in proven players from the transfer portal, he did say he would be going after McDonald’s All-Americans, aka “Burger Boys”. On Tuesday morning, he got his first one at Kentucky, in Oklahoma State transfer Brandon Garrison, who announced his commitment on social media.

A four-star in the 2023 recruiting class, Garrison elected to stay home and play for Oklahoma State over Kansas, Texas, and Houston. In his freshman season, he started 29 of 32 games and averaged 7.5 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 1.5 blocks last season. While he was inconsistent, he never stopped working.

“Just 19 years old, he, um… he’s special,” Oklahoma State coach Mike Boynton said of Garrison, choked up after a 20-point breakout game against Baylor back in January. “He just shows up and does his job.”

“He’s still just scratching the surface of what he can be. He really doesn’t know how good he can be yet, which is probably a good thing, because he doesn’t have a corrupted mind. He’s not in a rush to go somewhere. That’s a big part of the reason he’s been able to get better.”

Even Baylor coach Scott Drew loved what he saw from Garrison. “I loved him out of high school. I saw him play a lot. Loved his motor, loved his intangibles and character,” Drew said.

When Boyton was fired after the season, Garrison entered the transfer portal and a familiar name reached out, new Kentucky associate head coach Alvin Brooks, who was the lead recruiter for Garrison at Baylor. With that connection, he was able to recruit Garrison to Lexington.

Garrison will join a formidable frontcourt of Amari Williams and Andrew Carr, who are more experienced. However, Garrison brings strengths of his own and has NBA upside. One of his biggest strengths is his willingness to learn.

“His No. 1 thing, he wanted to learn. I was always impressed with his desire to learn and how well he adapted to the things he was learning,” Garrison’s mentor and high school Tommy Griffin said of him.

Scouting Report

Per 247Sports:

“Garrison is not going to wow you with scoring numbers or too many loud dunks. He’s not even overly vocal. But he’s very smart, in all the right spots on both ends of the floor, and should be able to fit right into offensive structure and defensive schemes from day one in college.

He has soft hands, good use of his left, passes well, is poised looking for cutters, and a reliable decision-maker (better than a 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio in EYBL). He’s not a shot creator or much of a floor-spacer at this point (although he does have touch to develop), and could better utilize his size and frame inside by getting deeper seals and a higher release point in the lane. But he also doesn’t try to do things he can’t and projects as someone who should be able to play out of dribble handoffs and short rolls at the next level.

Defensively, it’s not that he is exceptionally mobile, but that he understands coverages and can even utilize his length to show some deceptive switchability, as he did in FIBA play. He shows glimpses of rebounding in traffic, but could do so on a more consistent basis. Physically, he’s very coordinated for his size, gets off his feet fairly well, runs hard, and covers the court with long fluid strides. Overall, you just know what you’re going to get from him, and the overlap of his size and two-way reliability is what makes him such a high-floor prospect.

Believe it or not, it has only been a little over two weeks since Mark Pope took over as the Kentucky Basketball head coach. In that span, A LOT has happened. Pope has filled four of his five assistant staff positions and is nearly halfway done with his roster, adding six players, including four from the transfer portal.

“I’m really excited about where we are today,” Pope started in his Monday morning interview with Kentucky Sports Radio, when asked about how the roster is coming together. “This is really artistic. It is puzzle pieces. With every new piece, it kinda changes the picture. Where you have to readjust what you’re looking for in the next piece.”

How many pieces is Pope looking at? Nearly 30. “On our big board right now, we’re actually working with 29 guys that we’ve really, really zeroed in on,” Pope said. A broad list, I know, but also options. All 29 names are in a color-coded tier on a “giant whiteboard”, which has a broken wheel he joked, in his office. The staff also shares Google docs of targets, which he has politely asked the Big Blue Nation not to hack into.

Aidan Mahaney, who is coming off a weekend visit to Kentucky, and Great Osobor and Koby Brea, who are both currently visiting Kentucky, are certainly three of those players. After these visits and their coinciding decisions, Pope suggests the staff may take a brief pause to analyze the roster before proceeding further.

“I need to take a little pause right now and just see how our pieces are fitting together,” Pope said. Don’t be worried, they will go “lightspeed” again, but compares it to a “surgical pause”. With the transfer portal deadline coming on May 1st, it is a perfect time to look at all their options.

The next deadline to look toward is the May 29th NBA Draft deadline. Pope says he leaving some room open as Kentucky is talking to “a bunch of guys” that are going through the draft process before making a final decision. Two confirmed guys in that category are Jaxson Robinson, who played for Pope at BYU, and Jaylen Wells an uber-athlete from Washington State.

That said, Pope is not in the business of waiting until the last minute and being vulnerable to a last-minute decision. “We’re not going to leave too much space because there are really talented players that fit us now,” he said.

As it stands, Kentucky is in a really good position with its roster. Some really solid pieces have been added over the last week, especially defensively. Now, it’s about getting a couple of “dudes”, some offensive firepower, and then a bench. Pope and Co. sound prepared to tackle that.