‘The Quiet Force.’ One of Mark Pope’s biggest moves at UK has been adding this assistant.
As Mark Pope assembled the pieces for his first season as Kentucky basketball head coach, boxes needed to be checked.
Pope needed to build a roster, essentially from scratch, following the departures of every scholarship player from UK’s 2023-24 team. Pope needed to, initially, win over a Kentucky fan base that — at least on social media — appeared lukewarm to his hiring.
And Pope needed to assemble a coaching staff that could complement him on the bench, a hopeful precursor to years of future success.
Within that last element is where Pope has made his biggest splash yet as Kentucky’s head coach.
In late April, Kentucky officially announced the addition of Alvin Brooks III as Pope’s associate head coach.
Brooks III — who had previously been an assistant coach at Baylor since April 2016 — is the most significant offseason addition for Pope. The 44-year-old Brooks III is a proven recruiter and winner, with the former contributing to the latter.
“(When) Alvin talks, things happen,” Bruce Weber — who hired Brooks III as an assistant coach to his Kansas State coaching staff in April 2012 — told the Herald-Leader.
“Really good relationship guy with the players. Not only recruiting them, but when they were in our program. And he was a good identifier of talent.”
During his time at Baylor, Brooks III was part of a program that won the 2021 national championship and became a national recruiting force, despite being a non-traditional basketball school.
Brooks III’s tenure coincided with Baylor having recruiting classes that ranked 15th (2021), 12th (2023) and fifth (2024) in the nation, according to 247Sports. Even more impressive were the individual players Brooks III helped bring to Waco as the lead recruiter.
This group included guards Langston Love (a four-star prospect in the 2021 class), Keyonte George (a consensus five-star prospect in the 2022 class and a 2023 NBA draft first-round pick) and Ja’Kobe Walter (a consensus five-star prospect in the 2023 class and a projected lottery pick in this year’s NBA draft).
Brooks III helped the Bears sign the highest-rated class in program history for 2021. Baylor’s three-member class of Love, Kendall Brown and Jeremy Sochan was ranked fourth nationally by ESPN.
Brooks III also helped land a gem in the 2024 recruiting class for the Bears: Shooting guard VJ Edgecombe, another consensus five-star backcourt recruit and a 2024 McDonald’s All-American who picked Baylor from a final shortlist that also included Duke and Kentucky.
Most of Brooks III’s big recruiting wins have come with guards, a position group with which former UK head coach John Calipari was synonymous. At Baylor, Brooks III has been the successful lead recruiter for a five-star guard in each of the last three recruiting cycles.
Two of those guards (George and Walter) will have turned one-and-done college seasons into NBA first-round draft selections by the time the 2024-25 UK basketball season begins.
And when Walter is selected in the first round of this summer’s NBA draft, it could mark the fourth straight season Baylor produces a top-16 draft selection.
Edgecombe, who is ranked as the No. 4 overall recruit in the 2024 class by the 247Sports Composite, is already projected as a lottery selection in the 2025 NBA draft.
“He did a great job recruiting. ... He’s not very demonstrative. He’s not one of those guys that’s going to go dance in the stands or brag about himself or anything like that, but he’s a guy that just quietly gets his job done,” Weber said of Brooks III.
“I always called him ‘The Quiet Force.’”
Alvin Brooks III comes from a tradition-rich basketball family
Something that’s apparent from the recent parade of talented guards Brooks III brought to Baylor? He’s making good use of his recruiting connections in the state of Texas.
Love (San Antonio), George (Lewisville) and Walter (McKinney) all finished their high school careers outside of Texas, but Brooks (who is from Houston) was able to call upon his recruiting ties in the Lone Star State to help keep those players in state at Baylor.
Brooks III — who played college basketball at Midland College (located in West Texas) and Idaho State — was initially dissuaded from going into coaching by his father, Alvin Brooks Jr.
“I never brought Al to the gym to work him out. We never watched film together. ... I just kinda let him enjoy himself,” Brooks Jr. told the Herald-Leader. “I was more interested in making sure he was a good person, making sure he was a good student.”
The elder Brooks knows a thing or two about coaching, too:
Alvin Brooks Jr. has been involved in college basketball for nearly five decades. He’s been an assistant coach at Lamar, Houston, Texas Tech, North Texas, Texas-El Paso and Texas A&M.
Brooks Jr. is currently the head coach at Lamar and was previously the head coach at Houston in the mid 1990s, when he became the first African-American head coach in that program’s history. Brooks Jr. added that his son’s first-hand experience of watching his father be a college coach exposed him at an early age to the challenges of the profession.
“The plan was for him to be in the business sector the whole time,” Brooks Jr. said of his son, who holds a degree in finance and a master’s degree in athletics administration.
“He never wanted to coach. I never wanted him to coach... He was with me in the office until 2 in the morning sometimes, seeing me and my staff working at it. That doesn’t always equate to wins.”
But after determining he didn’t want to work in athletics administration or finance, Brooks III called up his father and told him he wanted to coach.
Despite the additional workload that comes when you cut your teeth coaching at the junior college level — such as doubling up with a job at the campus rec center — Brooks III was hooked after his first year of coaching.
“I could tell he had a knack for it,” Brooks Jr. said.
The winning began nearly instantly for Brooks III, who captured the 2006 National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) championship with Arkansas Fort-Smith and the 2007 NJCAA title with Midland College.
Brooks III worked his way up the coaching ladder — from Arkansas-Fort Smith to Midland to Bradley to Sam Houston State — before landing his first major conference opportunity with Weber at Kansas State.
When speaking to the Herald-Leader, Weber — who was also the head coach at Southern Illinois and Illinois, and is now a TV analyst for the Big Ten Network — said it was rare for him to hire outside “our basketball family.”
But, he needed someone with recruiting ties to Texas. And Brooks III gave him instant credibility when recruiting that area.
“We got somebody who, when he would go in on a school, the coaches liked him, respected him, knew he would do it the right way,” Weber said.
Brooks’ four seasons as an assistant coach at Kansas State included being on staff when the Wildcats won their first-ever Big 12 Conference regular season championship in 2013.
Members of the Kentucky program reached out to Weber during their vetting process for Brooks III. And Weber said he didn’t have to exaggerate when discussing his former assistant.
“He wants to get better as a coach,” Weber said. “Some guys think they’ve arrived at an early age. Al knows you’ve got to keep learning, growing and getting better, and that’s one thing he has done.”
From early age, Brooks III considered a relationship builder
Brooks Jr. has some unique insight into his son’s newest job. The elder Brooks was the director of basketball operations at UK from 2007-09 when Billy Gillispie was the head coach of the Wildcats.
“This dude’s got three national championships in 20 years. He has gotten better and better every year as a coach,” Brooks Jr. said of his son. “... He’s got my old school ways, but he’s got the new-age (mindset) where analytics come easy to him.”
Brooks III’s impact on UK hoops has already been felt, through both the NCAA transfer portal and traditional high school recruiting channels.
Brooks III — who is one of the three assistant coaches on the UK staff permitted to travel and recruit — faced several incoming Wildcats last season while at Baylor.
Former Oklahoma State center Brandon Garrison went a perfect 7-for-7 from the field and had 20 points against Baylor last season. Former Oklahoma guard Otega Oweh had nine points and four rebounds in a spirited 24 minutes against the Bears.
One of the final transfer portal targets for the Wildcats — ex-BYU guard Jaxson Robinson — twice scored in double-figures against Baylor last season. Both Pope and Brooks III watched Robinson play this week at the NBA Combine. (In addition to being in the NBA draft pool, Robinson is also in the NCAA’s transfer portal).
At the high school level, several top recruits have already mentioned hearing from Brooks III since he joined Kentucky. Those relationships will deepen and expand this weekend, as college coaches are permitted to watch prospects play in shoe circuit events around the nation.
“Al’s always been a people person, a connector to people,” Brooks Jr. said, citing the example of Brooks III making friends in both inner-city Houston schools and suburban West End schools in Houston.
“He’s always built relationships and has been able to do it in a genuine way. Not in a transactional way, in a genuine way. ... He’s been able to maintain that even at the highest level.”
The upshot to all of this?
The arrival of Brooks III in Lexington is viewed as a major acquisition for Pope as he embarks on his Kentucky coaching tenure.
“It just seems like everywhere he goes he’s had pretty good success,” Weber said of Brooks III. “He is good at identifying players, creating really positive relationships with them. ... Al is a great human being first, he’s a really good coach, he’s a good relationship guy and a great teammate, good person to have on your staff. I feel very strongly he’s going to be good for Kentucky.”
The first big NIL event of the Mark Pope era is near. The deadline to join is this week.
UK basketball’s SEC schedule for 2024-25 season will include John Calipari’s return to Rupp
One detail of the Calipari era especially irked UK basketball fans. Will Mark Pope fix it?
He’s the most intriguing UK basketball newcomer. ‘We could be seeing a big-time player.’
‘Elite shooter’ Trent Noah joins UK. Mark Pope likes in-state star’s ‘special physicality.’
Mark Pope has been praised for his first UK basketball roster. He still has one huge need.
This UK basketball roster took a weird turn. ‘I’m very intrigued,’ says analytics expert.
Nate Oats took a subtle dig at Kentucky basketball during Final Four week. He isn’t wrong
UK basketball’s 2024 recruiting class came undone. Here’s what happened to each player.
