UAB’s Lindsay-Martin Still Leans On Lessons Taught By Late Stepfather

By Steve Irvine

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - January 20, 2026

Adjustment periods have been a way of life for UAB’s KyeRon Lindsay-Martin. In the current world of college athletics that’s certainly not breaking news.

So, from a global perspective, it’s not out of the ordinary that Lindsay-Martin weaved his way through a college basketball journey that took him to four different programs and four separate conferences in four years. When you’re the one going through it, though, calling it challenging is perhaps an understatement.

Each stop brings a different style, a different head coach and a different roster that becomes your family. Each stop certainly brings a different role and different expectations. UAB head coach Andy Kennedy, for example, didn’t bring Lindsay-Martin to play a role on a roster that included 12 new family members. He brought the 6-foot-8, 222-pound power forward in to be one of the go-to guys. Kennedy saw all-conference potential in him and expected that from him.

Lindsay-Martin handled it the same way he’s handled everything on the basketball court. He relied on the lessons taught to him by the most important man in his life.

If you believe in putting labels on people, Aaron Martin was KyeRon’s stepfather. He wasn’t there for KyeRon’s birth but he was there, alongside KyeRon’s mother Jessica Johnson, for every step over the past 20 years or so. Truthfully, Aaron Martin wasn’t KyeRon’s stepfather, he was simply his father.

“He was in my life since I was like three four years old and kind of formed me into the basketball player and young man I am today,” Lindsay-Martin said of his Aaron Martin. “He worked out with me every day. During Covid we were in the garage on the VertiMax. He came to the gym every time I went. He was the reason I kind of started getting into basketball more seriously. Then when he had passed in September of last season it was kind of hard for me because he was like my drive, my reason.”

Lindsay-Martin’s hesitates for a moment and points out a prominent tattoo on his right leg that reads “Martin.” He then points out another that reads “Chill” because that was his father’s nickname. He grew to be so much like his father that his mother still calls him “Little Chill.” Check out the roster and you see another tribute to his father.

Prior to this season, he was always listed on the roster as Lindsay. Soon after he arrived at UAB, he asked that he be listed as Lindsay-Martin.

“I wanted to change my last name to just Martin but my grandpa's last name was Lindsay,” Lindsay-Martin said. “He passed away when i was younger so I wanted to keep both names. My dad, he's like my everything, from my basketball to just how I live life and how I approach different people in my life is from him and my mom too. He's just had so many experiences. He traveled the world, he was Vanilla Ice’s bodyguard. He's in the ‘Ice Ice Baby’ music video. Watch that video, he’s like doing a dance thing and stuff. He kind of helped my Mom mold me until I am today.”

He definitely molded Lindsay-Martin in a basketball career that seemed stuck in the mud, at least in terms of college basketball aspirations, until the summer after his junior season at Guyer High in Denton, Texas. At the time, the University of Illinois Chicago was the only program that offered him a scholarship.

“It was frustrating,” Lindsay-Martin said. “All these other guys were getting offers. Everybody wants to go to college to play DI basketball but it got concerning towards the summer going to my senior year. I was like, I want to be able to play at the next level. I put all this work in and then you know it's just God's plan to put me into the right spotlight in the right moment.”

That moment came in North Augusta, SC at the Nike EYBL Peach Jam in July of 2021. The best recruits in the country were competing in the tournament, which made it challenging. It got even more challenging when the biggest player, who was 6-foot-11, on Lindsay-Martin’s Pro Skills team didn’t show up. At the time, Lindsay-Martin was listed at 6-foot-7 and 205 pounds and was asked to serve as the big guy. In this particular tournament, he had to play the post position against guys like 7-foot-1 Derek Lively, who is now with the Dallas Mavericks, and 6-foot-10 current Detroit Piston Jalen Duren.

The experience changed his basketball life.

“I filled in to play the Five,” Lindsay-Martin said. “That's not really my true position but they needed somebody to play there. It was a bigger stage but long story short I was averaging 25 and 12 against guys like Derek Lively and Jalen Duren. We played guys like Nick Smith Jr. and Brandon Miller and I was on a team with Cason Wallace, he recently won a (NBA championship) ring with OKC. Just being in that spotlight but also being like David and Goliath playing small ball against bigger guys and to be able to hold my own, still score and rebound was big. I think that correlates a lot what I do here.”

Lindsay-Martin was selected as the Breakout player of the EYBL session for a team that was unbeaten. Before he left, he already had in the neighborhood of a dozen new scholarship offers and that number grew to more than 30 not long afterward.

“It was kind of like surreal, like a moment of everything I've asked for and worked for is coming to fruition,” Lindsay-Martin said. “On the drive home I was getting phone call after phone call. My mentality started to change. It felt like a weight off my chest for sure. I went on to my senior year, I was getting like multiple 30-point games, double-doubles and almost had triple-double one game. I was just going crazy because I didn't have that weight and that pressure like what my life gonna look like after graduation.”

He originally committed to UNLV but switched to Georgia, where he had his first college double-double (14 points, 10 rebounds against Miami Ohio) in his third game and averaged 6.2 points and 5.2 rebounds in 10 games. He had six points, seven rebounds, a blocked shot and a turnover in 20 minutes during a 87-73 loss to UAB in a tournament game in Daytona Beach. He chose to leave the team in late December.

Lindsay-Martin played a small role at Texas Tech in 2023-24. He averaged 2.7 points and 1.3 rebounds in nine appearances. He moved to Murray State looking for a bigger role. Before the season began, in September of 2024, his life changed when Aaron Martin suffered a stroke while practicing his youth basketball team and was taken to a Dallas area hospital by helicopter.

“I had literally talked to him a couple hours before just saying I love you and stuff,” Lindsay Martin said. “Then I got a phone call late night from my mom saying my Dad's in the hospital, he had a stroke at practice. They removed the clot in his brain but it kept clotting up and then you know he kind of just went under, like he went to sleep and he never really woke up. I went back home and I stayed with him in the hospital for like four days. We had to make a decision, you know, the value of life and stuff. That was probably the hardest part for me, just pulling the plug on my dad, especially before the season because it was going to be a big year for me. I didn't really play much in the two years prior and just wanted him to see that everything we had worked on going into that year would pay off.”

Lindsay-Martin did put together his best college season, averaging 6.6 points and 4.3 rebounds in 30 games. He scored in double digits in five games, including 27 points, 8 rebounds and five blocked shots against Middle Tennessee, and had a double-double of 15 points and 12 rebounds against UMES early in the season. But his minutes shrunk later in the season and he went looking for a bigger role.

Kennedy was trying to put together a roster that ended up including 12 new faces. Kennedy had lofty expectations for him. Lindsay-Martin had to work toward understanding the difference between a role player and go-to guy.

“Reality is he played a role, a limited role in his other three stops,” Kennedy said. “Well, here, I think, you know, it takes a little bit of time to understand the approach by which you need to go at things when you're playing starter minutes. I still bring him off the bench. I'll play all three of those bigs, just depending on who's playing well, foul trouble, what have you. He's like our sixth starter and he's really, really improved as it relates to his consistency.”

Lindsay-Martin’s talent flashed early in the season and then showed up in full force in a Jacksonville Classic win over Southern Illinois when he had 25 points, on 10-for-11 shooting from the field and 5-for-5 from the line, 10 rebounds with seven coming on the offensive end and one blocked shot.

“The SIU game, like you said, kind of popped the seal on it for me,” Lindsay-Martin said. “It was just like me starting to figure it out. What i got to do to just play my game and prepare. Everything just fell into place.”

Nineteen games into the season, Lindsay-Martin is averaging 11.6 points and 6.9 rebounds in about 24 minutes per game.

“Kye does a great job for us off the offensive glass and his activity level is really good,” said Kennedy, whose team returns to the Bartow Arena floor on Thursday night at 6 against South Florida. “As a result of that, he finds himself with opportunities. I think it's really important. We've always had guys like that. We had Trey (Jemison) for three years, and then we had Yax for two years. Those were both really, really good rebounders. Kye is not as big as them, but he does a really good job of wedging and understanding angles. He's got quick hands and he's doing a really good job of tracking the ball, especially off the offensive glass.”

Lindsay-Martin is currently in his best three-game stretch of the season, averaging 18 points and 8.3 rebounds while shooting 56.7 percent from the field and 85.7 percent from the line in road wins at East Carolina and Tulane and a home loss to Tulsa. He’s playing at the all-conference level Kennedy wanted from him. He’s also honoring the hard work that his father put in with him on the basketball court for many years.

“I think it's a blessing I've been through what I've been through,” Lindsay-Martin said. “Not many people would say losing their their dad or their idol would be a blessing but it sharpens me for more battles that God has for me to come. You know, he gives his toughest battles to the strongest warriors. I try not to be like ‘Why me?’ so much and more like this is building me for something I don't know is coming. I just try to keep my head on like that.”