Team Disappointment Aside, Brooks Will Leave UW As Better Basketball Player
Another loss, and Mike Hopkins' basketball coaching tenure at the University of Washington will come to an abrupt end. Most likely, the Huskies will miss out on the NCAA Tournament for the 12th time in 13 years. In Seattle, March Madness will turn into March Blandness once more.
Yet for all of these program negatives, the gifted Keion Brooks will pull on a UW uniform at least one more time when he and his teammates open the Pac-12 Tournament against USC on Wednesday at noon in Las Vegas.
The 6-foot-7 Brooks, the one-time Kentucky transfer, will insist that two years in Montlake — even with the Huskies winning just 33 of 63 games with him on board — has been a very good thing for him and his promising basketball career.
"It's funny, I was talking to my parents about this [last week] and coach Hop and this staff and everyone around here did an amazing job of giving me the opportunity to come in and showcase my full potential as a player — and I feel I've reached that," Brooks said. "It hasn't been perfect. I'm nowhere near the perfect player, but I feel like I got everything I could out of this situation."
Two years ago, he entered his name in the NBA Draft after three seasons at Kentucky only to withdraw it and turn to the UW.
He had played high school basketball in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with former Husky center and first-team All-Pac-12 selection Isaiah Stewart, so he met UW assistant coach Will Conroy and Hopkins multiple times as they came in and out of his hometown in pursuit of his teammate.
Conroy, ever the persistent recruiter, reached out to Brooks when he was done with Kentucky and ultimately convinced him into joining the Huskies.
"You just want to be somewhere where you can maximize everything that you can give," Brooks said. "It just seemed like at that point in time that Kentucky was not the place anymore. I had a great experience there. I loved everybody there. They taught me a lot and I'm going to take it with me the rest of my life.
"I thought moving forward it was time for some change. Coach Hop and his staff and everyone else came into my life at the right time, exactly when I needed them."
GREATNESS IN THE MAKING
As his college career winds down, Brooks is the Pac-12's leading scorer at 21.3 and the 13th-best point-producer in the nation. He's become far more of a complete player, improving his 3-point shooting — the one noticeable hole in his game coming to the UW — from 28.6 percent to 39.5 from one Husky season to the next.
"It's not easy to go out there and be successful," he said. "You've got to stack good days of preparation together so you can go out on the court and be confident. They stuck with me even when it was ugly sometimes. I was shooting off the side of the backboard, all kinds of stuff."
At the UW, Brooks has scored in double digits in every game except four over two years, failing to do so this season only against Montana State, when he finished with 9 points.
He's scored 20 points or more on 36 occasions, 30 or more points four times, with a high of 35 points against Washington State last month.
He's come up with 11 games of double-figure rebounds, with a high of 12 against UC San Diego this past December.
He's turned in 10 double-doubles for the Huskies in points and rebounds.
Unfortunately for Brooks, and this is one of Hopkins' program failures, the forward's talent has been squandered with an NCAA Tournament expected to elude the UW again. For multiple coaches, he stands to join a list of high-profile Husky talent that includes Dejounte Murray, Markelle Fultz, Terrell Brown, Jaden McDaniels and Stewart who each came in and out of Alaska Airlines Arena without getting a sniff of postseason play.
Brooks isn't complaining. He simply will say thank you to the Huskies, Hopkins and Conroy for making him a much better basketball player. Where he was an iffy NBA draft pick before, he's gone a long way to convincing the pros he should be one of them.
"I'm just happy and grateful for the opportunity that coach Hop gave me," he said. "The coaches did an amazing job with me every day, working on the finer details of my game. They helped my dreams become a reality now."
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