Couch: Pierre Brooks' humbling start at Michigan State took a turn at Christmas

EAST LANSING – Pierre Brooks played seven minutes Tuesday night at Michigan, tying the second-most minutes he’s played in a game all season. He’s OK with that right now. He wasn’t always.

Brooks’ freshman season at Michigan State has been a test of his maturity, patience and understanding. If you talk to him these days, he sounds like a 19-year-old who realizes his time will come and that how quickly that happens is largely up to his own work and discipline. If you talked to him before Christmas, you might have met the Grinch.

“My attitude wasn’t very good going into Christmas break,” Brooks said. “I was down, feeling sorry for myself and not really engaged in what we were doing.”

Whatever becomes of Brooks’ career at MSU, the short break during the middle of his freshman season will deserve some credit. MSU’s coaches met with Brooks and his family. Brooks had time back at home in Detroit to talk with his parents, who told him he had to stick it out and find ways to keep himself engaged and enjoying basketball, even if he wasn’t playing regularly.

What came out of all of it was a renewed commitment and more positive perspective from Brooks.

“I decided I had to start learning time management and start learning how to take care of myself, take care of my body,” Brooks said. “Use the resources that I have around me so I can be successful here.

“I just realized it was a process and I had to go through that process.”

At the heart of this: “I came to the realization that Coach (Tom Izzo) thinks I'm going to be a great player here.”

When you go from being the state’s Mr. Basketball and averaging 33 points per game at Detroit Douglass to falling out of the playing rotation entirely, while the two other freshmen in your class have larger roles, one can see why Brooks might have been surly. He isn’t the first freshman in MSU’s program to find misery when faced with reality and personal accountability. 

Only he could change it. He had arrived at MSU a bit heavy and hadn’t immediately cut the weight. His 6-foot-6, grown-man frame wasn’t an asset when he was well north of 230 pounds. Tom Izzo and his father wanted him to get in the best shape of his life.

“I went to a few practices and it just seemed like the pace kind of got to him in the beginning from the early practices that I saw,” said his father, Pierre Brooks Sr., who coached his son at Douglass. “They’ve got a great strength and conditioning program. They’ve even got nutritionists. I just implored Pierre to really take advantage of those type of opportunities.”

Not surprisingly, his changed approach and attitude was rewarded with playing time. Not a ton. But he had a place in the rotation most nights, beginning with two first-half minutes Feb. 1 at Maryland. Then three minutes in the first half at Rutgers. Followed by 3:18 to end the first half against Wisconsin and so on and so forth. Sometimes there was a second-half stint, too. Sometimes that second stint has still come in mop-up duty. But he’s had a real role almost every night out since the beginning of last month.

In that Wisconsin game, on one particular possession, when MSU’s offense had been going nowhere for a while, he drove into the paint, into the teeth of the defense, and threw a lob to Marcus Bingham for an alley-pop dunk. To watch the reaction of MSU assistant coaches Mark Montgomery and Doug Wojcik, you would have thought Brooks had just hit the game-winner.

“We weren't hitting the right guys. We were making the wrong plays,” Brooks said. “I made the right read. I wanted to score the ball, but I saw Marky at the last minute and I sort of threw the lob pass. I think what they felt was that I listened.”

There is perhaps no better way to a coaching staff’s heart. 

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Brooks is bright kid. He comes across as fairly humble, perhaps more so after his early MSU experience. He was a late bloomer physically. He was cut from his 6th-grade AAU team and told to play with younger kids.

He could always shoot it, though.

That’s one element we haven’t seen much yet from him at MSU. He’s taken just 11 3-pointers all year, making two of them. He’s got the green light to shoot if open. “Anytime I don’t shoot it, (Izzo) gets pretty mad. So I think that’s a sign of confidence in me.”

“He can shoot it,” Izzo said. “He's got strength. He’s a very good rebounder for his position. But he is a deep-range shooter. And we do need some of that. He’s got to get better as a defender. And again, got to get in the best shape of his life. Like Draymond (Green) went through, like Xavier (Tillman) went through. That's a big key for him.”

Brooks is under 230 pounds and hopes to settle in between 220 and 225. His thick frame, though, is also one of his attributes. 

“I'm seeing a little improvement — this from the outside looking in — with his conditioning,” Pierre Brooks Sr. said. “I know he's dropped a few pounds. I think that's made a big difference in terms of him getting more opportunities and running the floor better.”

Brooks’ seven minutes against Michigan included a season-high five straight to close the first half. He pulled down an offensive rebound and later drove to the basket for a layup. 

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“Keeping the positive attitude at all times really helps, especially with Coach Izzo,” Brooks said. “When put your head down, to me, for him, it’s a sign of weakness. My dad was our coach in high school, so playing for (Izzo), he hasn't said anything worse than what my dad would say. I'm here to be coached. I'm here to be the best person I can be, the best player I can be, so I can move on to the next level.”

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.