Last Saturday the Belmont women’s team beat Tennessee-Martin by 8 PTS in the OVC tourney title game to earn an automatic bid to next week’s NCAA tournament. The Bruins were 10-5 in early-February but have won 10 games in a row to claim the school’s 3rd NCAA tourney bid in the past 4 years. Earlier today HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to speak with Coach Bart Brooks about winning the highest scoring regulation game in NCAA women’s tourney history and what it feels like to make the NCAA tourney yet again.
You played basketball for 2 years at Dickinson State before tearing your ACL: how good a player were you back in the day, and how did you get into coaching? I was 1 of those guys who could make a 3 from the corner and just loved to play. I was a middle-of-the-road NAIA player and loved the free-flowing way that the game is supposed to be played. A lot of kids want to be a big-time player but I always knew that I wanted to coach.
You spent more than a decade at DePaul under Coach Doug Bruno, where you made the NCAA tourney every single year: what makes Doug such a great coach, and what was the most important thing that you ever learned from him? He is a great coach due to his unbelievable attention to detail with his program: there is not a lot that happens by accident. He is a really good teacher of the game: he coaches little kids at camp as hard as he coaches his Olympic players. It was literally like being in a basketball clinic every day for 11 years and I learned so much from him. Looking back now I realize why he did certain things and can see it more clearly. He gave his players so much confidence to just go out and make plays without looking over their shoulder every 2 minutes, which is something I have tried to take with me to my current job.
In the 2014 NCAA tourney you had a 104-100 win over Oklahoma: what are your memories of the highest scoring regulation game in NCAA women’s tourney history (www.ncaa.com/video/basketball-women/2014-03-22/wbb-first-round-depaul-oklahoma)? They were my team to scout so I remember a lot about that game! It was an unbelievably fun game to be a part of because both teams were executing at a high level. We were comfortable in the 1st half and then they made a run down the stretch. We made a corner 3 late in the game to ice it: we were all exhausted when we walked out of the arena and I will remember it forever.
You were hired as head coach at Belmont in 2017 and your 31 wins were the 2nd-most ever by a true 1st-year head coach in NCAA history: how were you able to come in and dominate right from the start? I wish it was something that I did myself, but I just inherited a talented veteran team that was equipped to make a run. I think the best thing I did was to not get too involved and just let them do what they did well. We had a good balance to start the season and then just tweaked some things as the year went on.
What has it been like to be around a pair of other great basketball coaches on campus like Rick Byrd/Casey Alexander? I spent a lot of time in Coach Byrd’s office picking his brain during my 1st 2 years: he was so humble despite all that he has accomplished. He is an unbelievably great guy and I still use a lot of his stuff: I spent half of the quarantine studying what he did to get 1 of his players some shots. Casey has been incredible in taking over from a legend and not skipping a beat. Everyone feels that Casey’s team looks a lot like Rick’s but I am so impressed with what he has done.
How close were you to the Christmas Day bombing in downtown Nashville, and how is the city doing 10 weeks later? I was not that close since I live out in the suburbs but I remember watching the devastation on TV. I was just thankful that our players were home for winter break. We have been through a lot in Nashville over the past 12 months, including a huge tornado and the pandemic, but I am so impressed with the resiliency of this city.
In the OVC tourney title game last Saturday FR G Destinee Wells had 32 PTS/4-7 3PM/4 STL in a win over #1-seed Tennessee-Martin en route to being named conference tourney MVP: what did it mean to you to win another championship, and where does Destinee rank among the best freshmen that you have ever seen? She is definitely the best freshman I have seen from my head coaching chair. She is unique in her ability to be ready to perform right away: I am not surprised…but I cannot say that I thought she would score 32! Last year we lost in the semifinals so just to be back in the arena and have a chance to compete for a title was nice, and then it helped that we had our best performance of the year. I never take a single win for granted and it was a special moment.
You have now made 3 NCAA tourneys during your 1st 4 years: are you just on a good streak or can we use the “dynasty” label? Every team has a life of its own. I walked into the middle of a run where we made 4 straight NCAA tourneys, and that is what our players have signed up for. Now we are trying to figure out how to take the next step in the journey and take our program to another level by becoming more nationally relevant, which is my charge as head coach. I told my team to appreciate it because there are many players who never make it to even 1 NCAA tourney.
Your wife Charlene played pro basketball for 5 years: who is the best athlete in the family? It is not even close: she wins by a landslide! She played for Coach Bruno before I got to DePaul and then had a great pro career overseas.
What kind of seed do you think you deserve, and what kind of seed do you think you will get? This is such a hard year to compare teams who did not have any common opponents or played a different number of conference games or had players out. I think the Committee has a hard job this year but we are typically in the 12-14 seed range. We played Kentucky tough to start our season and had a shot late in the game to tie Marquette so I think that we are competitive with teams in that range.