MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Game-winning shots were trending at West Virginia a few years ago when Chris Brooks died suddenly on Jan. 27, 2021. 
 
Just two days prior to Brooks' untimely passing, Mountaineer guard Deuce McBride, now playing for the New York Knicks, made a short jumper with six seconds left to defeat 10^th-ranked Texas Tech 88-87 at the WVU Coliseum.
 
Well, I've got the game-winner of all game-winners for you, and it was taken by Chris Brooks, perhaps the most unlikely shot maker since Jonas Salk.
 
People today who complain about 50% free throw shooters never saw Brooks play for the West Virginia Mountaineers back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We once watched Chris miss all 10 of his foul shots in a game against Massachusetts during his sophomore season in 1988.
 
To his credit, Chris made adjustments each time he missed. If he missed one to the right, the next miss was to the left. If he was long, the following one was short, and so forth.
 
Brooks' shooting form was actually not too bad – elbow tucked in and shooting hand lined up with the basket like you are shaking hands with the rim - the way his coach, Gale Catlett, used to teach it to just about every young kid in the state who attended his basketball camps back then, me included.
 
But as soon as Chris reached the point when he was about to release the ball, he would hesitate momentarily before letting it go. Instead of one fluid motion ending with the follow through, there was a quick jerk right before the ball went airborne.
 
Today, we call that the yips, and poor Chris definitely had them. Think Charles Barkley on the tee box right before the clubhead strikes the golf ball.
 
Teammate Herbie Brooks, who legendary Voice of the Mountaineers Jack Fleming used to call "Little Brooks" to differentiate from the "Big Brooks," said he used to watch Chris make 60 to 70% of his free throws each day during practice.
 
"It was definitely a mental thing," Herbie once said.
 
It was also a mental thing for Chris the way he played around the basket – seemingly always in a bad mood!
 
I was Chris' classmate at WVU, and I remember my first encounter with him at Stansbury Hall during the year he was sitting out because of the old Proposition 48 rule. There was a big pickup game going on the main court when I got there, and I wanted to warm up on a side basket before the next one.
 
So, I walked over, picked up a basketball and began shooting. No sooner had I done this when the game immediately stopped, and I heard a thunderous voice yell, "Hey, what the &^%$ do you think you are doing?!" in a loud, Bronx, New York, accent.
 
It turns out I had picked up Chris' ball.
 
"Hey man, I'm just warming up before the next game," I answered.
 
"Okay," he said, adding ominously, "but I will remember your face!"
 
"Not as much as I will remember who owns this basketball!" I thought to myself.
 
The 6-foot-6, 230-pound Brooks was an intimidator on the court who made his points (literally and figuratively) by dunking on the people unfortunate enough to be defending him. Brooks is the most explosive leaper I've ever watched play for the Mountaineers, and nobody could jump from a standing position off two legs better than he could, including Sagaba Konate.
 
Old-timers say Carey Bailey had similar hops when he played for WVU back in the late 1960s, but that's before my time.
 
"Chris was a bull," Catlett recalled earlier this week. "He would spread out in the post, and if you tried to get around him it took all day because he was so big, and once you got the ball to him he was so strong and powerful with it.
 
"About two weeks into practice during Chris' first year with us, we're scrimmaging and doing different things, and he gets the ball in the low box, fakes right, turns around over his left shoulder and just jumps up and dunks it over top of the guy," Catlett said. "I said, 'good Lord, what is that?' I've seen guys do that from a running jump, but from a standing position, at his size, to jump up and dunk it, that was pretty phenomenal."
 

Teammate Darryl Prue loves telling the story about the time Pitt's Rod Brookin once dunked on Brooks during a game at the WVU Coliseum in 1987 and Chris getting his revenge soon after. 
 
Prue had gambled and missed trying to make a steal at midcourt, leaving Brooks exposed for his unplanned facial. Unlike today, there wasn't much gesturing, finger-pointing and trash talking going on back then, but Brookin's Panther teammates Jerome Lane, Charles Smith and Demetreus Gore were giving it to Chris the next time they were all standing together at the free throw line.
 
Naturally, Brooks was enraged. 
 
Later, when the opportunity eventually presented itself, Big Brooks got into position to throw down a putback dunk so hard that he nearly pulled the basket and everything supporting it to the ground!
 
Had Brookin, Smith, Lane or Gore had a hand anywhere near the rim, it would have been completely severed. Chris played the game like bull in a China shop, an "Evel Knievel without the cycle," New York city basketball scout Tom Konchalski once said, which was the opposite of how he was off the court around his teammates, at least most of the time.

More on that in a moment.
 
Catlett said that Brooks always had a great attitude, was a joy to coach and was a terrific teammate.
 
"He was a bubbly, kind of jovial kid and was always teasing and joking," the retired coach recalled, "and outside of his great natural ability and his desire to win, I think that was one of his greatest attributes. 
 
"Everyone was his friend; he was never too serious, came to practice happy, enjoyed life, I was always very impressed with his attitude, and I think that's what made him the player that he was."
 
And what a player Brooks was!
 
There are only two McDonald's All-Americans in the history of WVU men's basketball. One is Oscar Tshiebwe, who didn't finish his career at West Virginia, and the other is Chris Brooks, who did.
 
Long before Vernon Bailey passed on the baton to live year-round in Fort Myers, Florida, he would have signed up thousands of subscribers to his West Virginia Rivals website had he covered Brooks' recruitment when every school in the country was pursuing him out of Oak Hill Academy in Virginia back in 1986.
 
That was the year of J.R. Reid, Terry Mills, Rumeal Robinson, Rex Chapman, Derrick Coleman and Stacy Augmon. Then there was Chris Brooks, who shocked everyone by picking West Virginia over the likes of Villanova, Georgetown, Maryland, UNLV, Syracuse, Kentucky, DePaul and many others.
 
Brooks signing to play at West Virginia University in the Atlantic 10 Conference was a big, big deal. Players of his caliber were not playing in the Atlantic 10 during that time, not to mention Morgantown, West Virginia.
 
After West Virginia signed Brooks in 1986, a few years later Temple landed guard Mark Macon, another national recruit who helped prop up the A-10, which was always playing in the shadows of the Big East.
 
One year before Brooks, Catlett also landed Prue, a Washington, D.C., all-metro player, giving the Mountaineers two big-time forwards. Prue scored more than 1,400 points, grabbed more than 850 rebounds, made more than 200 steals and dished out more than 200 assists during his four-year career and was inducted into the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame in 2019.
 
Brooks, whose career totals include more than 1,600 points and 750 rebounds, will join Prue posthumously in the WVU Sports Hall of Fame this Saturday prior to the Kansas game, and Prue will be there accepting on Chris' behalf.
 
In 1989, the second year Prue and Brooks played together, with Cleveland State transfer Ray Foster handling the center position instead of Prue, who did so out of necessity in 1988, West Virginia had one of the best teams in the country.
 
It was probably one of the four or five best teams Catlett ever coached at Cincinnati or West Virginia, and the Mountaineers got on a roll following a couple of early season hiccups against Robert Morris and Bradley.
 
Catlett said the Bradley game came about because one of his big sponsors, Walker Machinery, was located in Peoria, Illinois. Had Catlett known Hersey Hawkins was playing for the Braves, he would have gone to Peoria during the summertime instead.
 
As for the Robert Morris defeat, Prue said Big Brooks was actually one of the guys who spoke his mind during a players-only meeting that team captains Little Brooks and Prue had arranged.
 
This was somewhat surprising to the other players, to say the least.
 
Big Brooks once showed up to a game with a severely cut finger after getting into a fight with Bill Nunn, the actor who played the fictional character Radio Raheem in the Spike Lee movie "Do The Right Thing." Somehow, the two found themselves together at a house party, got into a disagreement, and Chris decided to settle it by smashing a telephone upside his head.
 
Another time, according to Prue, Chris and teammate Matt Roadcap were wrestling in the locker room and while they were horsing around, Roadcap popped his big toe out of joint, causing Chris to get physically ill.
 
"The year Chris sat out for Prop 48, he actually stayed in my apartment more than I did," Prue recalled. "We used to have empty boxes of pizza sitting outside of the apartment. I thought I could eat, but Chris could really eat." 
 
Prue said he once watched Chris devour three Big Macs at the McDonalds across from the Towers dormitories - and probably would have eaten a fourth had he not run out of money. 
 
"I was like, 'Damn, Chris!'" Prue laughed.
 
So, having Big Brooks get up in front of the team and speak his mind could have taken something deadly serious off the rails pretty quickly.
 
"(Brooks) said, something to the effect, 'We're all here, so we might as well make the best of it,'" Prue recalled, laughing. It was not quite "win one for the Gipper" as far as motivational speeches go, but everyone got the message. West Virginia won 22 straight games from Dec. 5, 1988, until Feb. 26, 1989, and rose to as high as No. 11 in the national rankings.
 
That season ended in Greensboro, North Carolina, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament against Duke on basically the Blue Devils' home court. Had West Virginia not got tripped up by Penn State in the semifinals of the Atlantic 10 Tournament, the Mountaineers would have received a much higher seeding and would have avoided the misfortune of facing Duke in such an impossible environment.
 
Still, West Virginia was trailing the ninth-ranked Blue Devils 62-61 with three minutes remaining and by three with less than a minute when Prue was called for an offensive foul against Danny Ferry while driving to the basket.
 
Afterward, Catlett said Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski told him the Mountaineers were the best defensive team they faced all season.
 
Brooks and Prue were terrific near the basket, averaging a combined 24.7 points and 11.8 rebounds per game. Nobody in the history of WVU basketball, Jerry West included, shot better from the field than Chris Brooks. 
  
His 60.2 field goal percentage on 1,147 career field goal attempts is a school record that still exists today, 33 years after his career ended. Of course, most of those were rim-rattling dunks.
 
Beyond there?
 
It was best to duck and cover, which brings us to Chris' game-winning shot against Duquesne at the A.J. Palumbo Center in Pittsburgh on Jan. 30, 1990.
 
A see-saw affair came down to one moment late in the game when the basketball somehow ended up in Chris' hands as he was standing beyond the 3-point line. There were only three seconds left on the shot clock and the game was tied at 74.
 
Considering Catlett's notorious reputation as a shot manager, I'm pretty sure that's not how he drew up the play in the huddle during the time out.
 
If the ball was to be in Brooks' hands that far away from the basket, he was supposed to reverse it to where Chris Leonard was standing in the corner. Catlett was a man who understood percentages and Leonard, a 41.7% 3-point shooter, was a far better bet than Brooks, a 0% 3-point shooter.
 
But Brooks, with the ball resting in his hands like a grenade with its pin pulled, took a quick look to his right, made one dribble toward the basket and jumped as high as he could (which is really high!) to let loose a shot that looked more like a F/A-18C Hornet about to land on an aircraft carrier. Had there not been a basket to stop the ball, it very well could have ended up at the bottom of Forbes Avenue.
 
But it went in, West Virginia won the game and afterward, Associated Press writer Alan Robinson summed things up perfectly in the opening paragraph of his game story: "For one of the few times in his career, West Virginia junior Chris Brooks didn't mind talking about his shooting."
 
And he didn't. 
 
"It felt real good leaving my hand. I was looking for our guards coming off the screen, but the clock was running down, and I didn't want to pass the ball. It felt good when I shot it and luck was by my side," Brooks said.
 
It was the only 3 Chris Brooks tried that year. Catlett, the man who understands percentages, wouldn't dare let him try another, and Big Brooks only attempted six more during his brilliant four-year career that ended in 1991.
 
"You know me, had Chris missed that he would have been sitting on the bench right next to me," Catlett laughed. "When that went in, I couldn't believe it. I told Brooks later on, 'Just because you're open doesn't mean you shoot it! There was a reason you were open!'"
 
Joking aside, Catlett said Brooks had great instincts around the basket that helped him become such an effective field goal shooter.
 
"We designed some stuff to get him the ball, but also his instincts to play and knowing good shots from bad shots … you couldn't cover him one on one, because he was too strong and too tough, so they had to bring another person off (to help)," Catlett said. "He showed you the open hand if you were on the right side he's got his left hand up, and if you were on the left side he's got his right hand up, giving the passer a target to throw to.
 
"Then once he got the ball, he was very unpredictable," Catlett continued. "Sometimes, he would go up with it quickly. Sometimes, he would face up on you or do a drop-step on you; he did what the defense gave him.
 
"Now as for Chris' free throw shooting, the assistant coaches were responsible for that," Catlett chuckled.
 
Among West Virginia University players, there was no one better close to the basket than Chris Brooks. In that one instance against Duquesne, however, Big Brooks even managed to put one in from far away.
 
Joining Brooks in this year's eight-member WVU Sports Hall of Fame class are football players Anthony Becht, Rasheed Marshall and Adrian Murrell, baseball's Mark Landers, track and cross country's Bob Donker, women's basketball's Liz Repella and swimming's Bette Hushla.
 
Becht announced on social media yesterday that he will be unable to attend Saturday's ceremony inside the Caperton Indoor Practice facility and will send a video message instead.
 
Arrangements are being made to recognize Becht during West Virginia's game against Iowa State on Saturday, Oct. 12. Becht's son, Rocco, is Iowa State's starting quarterback.
 
This year's WVU Sports Hall of Fame ceremony begins at 9 am.