After completing his military service in 1953, Garrett played exhibition games for the Harlem Globetrotters for less than two years before becoming a basketball coach and educator in Indianapolis.

[2] Garrett was named Indiana Mr. Basketball for 1947, the same year that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball.

[6] Bill Garrett met Betty Guess, a native of Madison, Indiana, and a fellow physical education major at IU, during his sophomore year of college.

[7] Bill and Betty Garrett were the parents of four children, which included three daughters, Tina, Judith, and Laurie, and a son, William "Billy."

IU also barred black students from living in most residence halls, eating in campus dining rooms, participating in university social events, and joining honorary societies and white fraternity and sororities.

Garrett also broke the record during the 1950–51 season for scoring the highest number of points in Big Ten Conference games with a total of 193.

In June 1951, a month after the Boston Celtics selected Garrett as a player in the second round of the National Basketball Association draft, he graduated from IU with a Bachelor of Science degree in physical education.

[16] Garrett was the sole African American basketball player in the Big Ten Conference during all four years he played for IU.

He also "endured taunts form opponents and their fans" and had to overcome "early hostility from some of his own teammates," as well as several incidents of racial discrimination at home and when the team was on the road.

[17] Despite the many challenges and obstacles, Garrett emerged as favorite among the IU fans in addition to setting new scoring and rebounding records for the school.

However, Garrett's professional basketball career was quickly curtailed after he drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War and instructed to report for induction by September 7, 1951.

[20][21] Following his nearly two-year stint with the Globetrotters, and several months of factory work in Ohio, Garrett began teaching and coaching basketball at Wood High School in Indianapolis, Indiana, in September 1956, but his stay was only a brief one.

[22] In 1957 Garrett was hired to replace Ray Crowe as head coach of Indianapolis's Crispus Attucks High boys' basketball team.

[4] As a college basketball player for IU, Garrett was the first African American to regularly play on a Big Ten Conference team.

In the season following Garrett's graduation from IU in 1951 "at least seven black ballplayers made Big Ten teams," including Ernie Hall at Purdue University and Bob Jewell at Michigan.

By 1952 others had joined the rosters of Big Ten varsity teams: Rickey Ayala at Michigan State, Walt Moore at the University of Illinois, and Deacon Davis at Iowa, following the path that Garrett had forged earlier at IU.