Another write-up.
Alvin Brooks is no stranger to sequels in his long college coaching career. As the Houston Chronicle detailed 2010, when Brooks joined James Dickey’s staff at Houston as an assistant that same year, he was going back to a place he’d promised to himself he’d never return.
That made sense, since Brooks was back at a program where he had floundered early in his career. In 1993, the then-33-year old was named head coach of a Cougars team that wasn’t yet a decade removed from its Phi Slama Jama heyday, and ultimately went 54-84 in five seasons in charge. But Brooks came back as an assistant under Dickey, and eventually transitioned onto Kelvin Sampson’s staff in 2014, from there becoming a big part of the Cougars’ resurgence.
Brooks is in the sequel business again, and this time it’s a homecoming with warmer memories. Last week he was named head coach at Lamar, adding the next chapter to one of college basketball’s most interesting coaching careers — and one that landed in the national spotlight over the past week as he coached against his son, a Baylor assistant, in the Final Four.
The elder Brooks played for the Cardinals from 1979-81, and then served as an assistant from 1981-86, and the sentiment tied to that history was not lost on him in a video made available by the school announcing his hire.
Mid-Major Madness