Audi Crooks’ Candid Take on Body Criticism Resurfaces
The Iowa State Cyclones women's basketball team are in the middle of a mid-season collapse.
Iowa State started the season with a perfect 14-0 record. But things went south once 2026 arrived, as they're 0-5 since January 1 ahead of their January 21 game against Cincinnati. There are several factors to this brutal stretch, a main one being that Addy Brown and Arianna Jackson are both injured, and two of the Cyclones' most important players.
Iowa State’s five-game skid is about injuries, scouting, and who opponents are attacking. pic.twitter.com/w8S3AIKulQ
— Grant Young (@GrvntYoung) January 20, 2026
This has put Iowa State star junior center Audi Crooks in the spotlight in more ways than one. Without Brown and Jackson, teams can put all their defensive focus on Crooks, denying her the ball and limiting her offensive impact. This is evident in her scoring average of 20.6 points per game during this losing stretch, compared to her season average of 26.9 points per game.
Crooks' defensive struggles have also been scrutinized during this losing streak. She has never been a good defender, but opposing teams have forced her into space and outmaneuvered her there with more ease than in the past.
Clips of Crooks coming up short on defense have gone viral and sparked a lot of criticism about her abilities on that side of the court. It has also sparked comments about Crooks' frame.
These comments have always been present, but seem to have reached a new level amid the Cyclones' losing streak.
Audi Crooks' Past Comments About Body Image Resurface
Candace Buckner of The Washington Post published a January 21 column about the commentary around Crooks, specifically regarding her frame. While Crooks declined to be interviewed for the story, comments she made to Talia Goodman of On3 Sports in 2024 appeared in Buckner's article.
“There might be 100 comments about my body or about how I look. But then there are 1,000 about my skill set, about my character, about how I smile and about how I treat other people,” Crooks was quoted as saying in Goodman's article.
“So it’s just like I said, no matter what you do, no matter who you are, if you’re doing something worth doing, then somebody’s going to hate on you. It’s just recognizing that and trying to take the bad with the good – and the good clearly outweighs the bad.”
She also added, “That was hard for me as a young girl. I think the first time I got posted on ESPN, I was in seventh or eighth grade and I definitely wasn’t developed and I wasn’t really in shape. Seeing that when you’re 13 and there are grown men talking about you and your body instead of the game that I’m playing – that’s crazy. That was a lot for me to handle at such a young age."
Being put under a microscope is not easy for anyone, let alone a 21-year-old woman. But Crooks deserves a lot of credit for how she has handled any criticism thrown her way.
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Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.
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