Quintin Garrison arrived at Valpo as Special Assistant to the Head Coach prior to the 2023-24 season. He was promoted to his current position of Assistant Coach/General Manager prior to the 2025-26 season.
Following his first season with the Assistant Coach/GM title, Garrison was named a finalist for the 2026 Men’s Basketball GM of the Year by The College Front Office.
Year 3 of Garrison’s Valpo tenure in 2025-2026 saw the program record its best conference winning percentage and highest league win total since joining the Missouri Valley Conference in 2017. The team went 11-9 in MVC play, nearly doubling its conference win total for a second straight season, and notching the team’s first-ever winning season in Valley play. Overall, Valpo won 18 games including 17 regular-season contests in 2025-26, the program’s highest regular-season win total since its final season in the Horizon League in 2016-2017. Year 3 of Garrison’s time on staff was Valpo’s first winning season overall since 2019-2020 and featured a 13-4 record at the Athletics-Recreation Center, the team’s highest home win total since 2016-2017.
Garrison’s third season on staff was an underdog story in the sense that Valpo finished tied for sixth in the MVC and just one game out of a tie for third in a tightly-packed league after being picked last in the 11-team league in the preseason poll. Valpo ranked 325th nationally in Division-I experience as only three scholarship members of the team had played a D-I game prior to the season. Valpo finished the regular season at 150 in the KenPom after starting the season at 283, moving up 133 spots in the rankings, tied for the fourth largest improvement nationally.
The 2025-26 season saw Valpo sweep the regular-season series from UIC for the first time since the Flames joined The Valley, sweep the regular-season series from Indiana State for just the second time since joining The Valley, win a first-round MVC Tournament game over Indiana State to advance to the league quarterfinals, end a 10-game head-to-head losing streak to Bradley and squash an eight-game head-to-head skid to Drake while notching a road victory over the Bulldogs for the first time since 2018 en route to sweeping Drake for the first time since 2017-18.
In Garrison’s first two seasons in Northwest Indiana, the Valpo coaching staff recruited and developed back-to-back Missouri Valley Conference Freshmen of the Year, marking just the third time that the same team won that award in consecutive seasons since the honor began in 1986. In his second season on staff, Garrison helped Valpo over double its win total from the previous year as the Beacons recorded 15 victories in 2024-25, the team’s highest output since 2019-20. Valpo picked up numerous breakthrough triumphs in Garrison’s second season on staff en route to an MVC Tournament semifinal appearance. The team won a season series against Missouri State for the first time in 16 seasons of shared conference affiliation, defeated UNI in back-to-back matchups for the first time in 40 all-time meetings and beat Belmont for the first time since the Bruins joined the Missouri Valley Conference thanks to a 101-point output, Valpo’s highest in league play since 1998.
Before coming to Valpo, Garrison served as the associate head coach at Trinity International University, where he had been part of the staff since 2018. Prior to that, he spent six seasons on the coaching staff at Bolingbrook High School in Illinois and helped the team to a 94-26 record over his final four seasons. Garrison has coached and developed two NBA players and five others who have gone on to play professionally in Europe.
In 2014, Garrison founded Hoopers Basketball Club, a travel basketball organization. He operated as a coach and director of operations and recruiting. Garrison graduated from the University of Illinois in 2005 with a degree in finance. He and his wife Kay have two children, daughter Audrey and son Gavin.
What They’re Saying About Quintin Garrison
Todd Abernethy, FAU Assistant Coach: “Valpo made a great hire in Quintin. Not only is he a great coach and teacher of the game, but he has a unique ability to connect with players and gain their trust. He will be an amazing mentor to the young men on the team and will add value to the program because of his experience at the high school and college level. He was an invaluable resource in my first year as a college head coach, and I’m confident that he will do the same for Coach Powell and Valpo Basketball.”
Greg Miller, Trinity International Head Coach: “Coach Q is excellence personified. The way he approaches his work on a daily basis is the same approach that every program in the country would be happy to have. He made our program better each day through building genuine relationships with our players, recruiting high character and high caliber players, helping each player to be the best possible version of himself on and off the court and all while being a man of integrity. Coach Q is a great hire for Valpo Basketball.”
