State program hires pair of assistants
While Nikki Mccray-penson has been working to piece together her 2021-22 roster with the transfer portal, the secondyear Mississippi State coach has also had to fill a couple of spots on her coaching staff.
With the parting of ways of Scepter Brownlee last week and the loss of recruiting coordinator Brittany Young to the head coaching position at Austin Peay, Mccray-penson has filled both spots. She got her assistant this week in the form Michigan’s Wes Brooks and also landed Arizona assistant Tamisha Augustin.
Brooks has spent the last four seasons with the Wolverines in Ann Arbor and worked with the guards and wings for Michigan. In his four seasons there, Michigan made the NCAA Tournament three times and were poised to make it in 2020 as well before the postseason was canceled.
This season, the Wolverines went 16-6 and 9-4 in Big 10 play with key wins over No. 15 Northwestern and No. 15 Ohio State in the regular season. The regular season saw them earn the highest seed in school history at No. 6 and Michigan made a run to the school’s firstever Sweet 16 notching easy wins over Florida Gulf Coast and Tennessee before dropping a heartbreaking 78-75 overtime loss to Baylor.
Brooks had a hand in coaching up second-team All-big Ten
Leigha Brown and All-defensive team member Akienreh Johnson. Michigan went 21-11 in Brooks third year last season and 10-8 in conference play, were 22-12 and 11-7 in conference play in 2018-19 with a second round finish in the tournament and in his first year he helped them to 23 wins and another win in the NCAAS.
There’s been plenty of Power 5 experience for Brooks as he began his career in 2004-06 when he was a graduate assistant for West Virginia. That work earned him the Director of Basketball Operations post for the 2006-07 season.
Brooks had stints at smaller colleges beginning as an assistant for a season at Robert Morris, for four seasons at
Texas Southern, another four at North Texas and two years at Utah.
Augustin is coming off of a huge 2020-21 season as a member of the Wildcats’ staff. Arizona made a run all the way to the national championship game where it came up just short against Stanford. Augustin has been the recruiting coordinator at Arizona since 2019 and signed two-time Gatorade Player of the Year in North Da