Lexington — Kentucky basketball once considered hiring Baylor’s Scott Drew as its new coach. While Drew remains in Waco, Texas, the Wildcats will allegedly keep a former Baylor coach on the bench next season.
According to various sources, new UK coach Mark Pope hired Alvin Brooks III as an assistant on Wednesday. Brooks, Drew’s associate head coach, has spent the last eight seasons on the Bears’ staff. Brooks joins Cody Fueger, one of Pope’s coaches at BYU, and Jason Hart, a Syracuse standout and former NBA G League Ignite coach, on Kentucky’s first-year staff.
That’s not Brooks’ only tie to the Wildcats. His father, Alvin Brooks, was UK’s director of basketball operations during previous coach Billy Gillispie’s two-year tenure in Lexington.
The elder Brooks is now the head coach at Lamar.
The younger Brooks is recognized as a top recruiter. According to 247Sports’ all-time recruiting rankings, which stretch back to 2000, Brooks was the principal recruiter for three of the Bears’ top five signees: No. 1 VJ Edgecombe, No. 4 Keyonte George, and No. 5 Ja’Kobe Walter. Edgecombe, the No. 4 overall player in the 2024 class according to the 247Sports Composite rankings, chose Baylor over Kentucky and fellow recruiting juggernaut Duke.
Edgecombe, George, and Walter were all considered five-star prospects in their respective classes.
However, the Bears’ success with Brooks extends beyond the recruiting path.
Brooks, a Houston native, joined Baylor after serving as Bruce Weber’s assistant at Kansas State for four seasons (2012-13 to 2015-16).
Brooks has previously worked as an assistant coach for Division I colleges Sam Houston State (2010-12) and Bradley. Prior to Bradley, he worked at Midland College, a junior college in Midland, Texas, for the 2006-07 season. Brooks led the Chaparrals to a junior college national championship that season while working for Grant McCasland (now the head coach at Texas Tech). He also won a junior college national championship at Arkansas-Fort Smith in 2006, and he worked as an assistant with the Lions for two seasons (2004-06).
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