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Home cooking Illinois native Brian Cook looks to bang with the big boys at the junior worlds
By Carl Bialik, CNNSI.com Brian Cook is accustomed to playing basketball in the flatlands of Illinois, where he has lived for all of his 19 years. The Fighting Illini sophomore learned the game from his mother, Joyce, who in the 1970's was a star forward/center at Lincoln High, the very school at which Brian won the state's Mr. Basketball title his senior year. So it was something of a shock for Cook to arrive in Colorado Springs on May 26 for USA Basketball's 20-and-under national team trials. "It was hard to breathe out there," he said of the city's 6,035-feet elevation. "It's the first time I've been at that kind of altitude."
To make things more difficult, Cook had less than eight hours to adjust to the thin Rocky Mountain air before his first scrimmage. The 6-foot-10 forward got into town a day later than planned when his flight out of Champaign was cancelled. Not a problem. After the three-day trials, Cook was one of only 16 players invited back for the final training camp, to be held July 10-17 in Miami. There, Cook will be competing against Duke's Carlos Boozer, Michigan State's Zach Randolph and other big men. If Cook is among the dozen selected for the team, he will represent the U.S. in the junior world championships for men 20 and under in Sao Paolo, Brazil later that month. The talent in Colorado Springs didn't intimidate Cook, who last year shared the Big Ten Freshman of the Year award with Michigan's LaVell Blanchard. "There was a lot of great competition out there," he says. "Guys from Michigan State and Kansas and Duke. I played with them before and I knew I could play with them." Cook shot 32 percent from three-point range for the Illini last season -- impressive for his size -- but he didn't rely on his soft touch in Colorado Springs. "It's more of a guard-like game," Cook says of the trials. "They like to run the floor, so I just ran the floor and got layups. I think I shot like twice from outside. I was inside most of the time."
Time spent at the up-tempo trials will serve as helpful preparation for the upcoming season. New Illini coach Bill Self has been exhorting the members of his squad to push the ball up and down the floor in pickup games. "We're probably going to be able to run a lot more than we did [last year]," Cook says. "With Coach [Lon] Kruger, we had a lot of sets." Nine of the top 10 Illini players return this fall, giving Self a variety of weapons to choose from. "It's fair to say we have one of the deepest teams in the nation," Cook says. "I think we can run with any team." To finish around the basket in a run-and-gun offense -- especially in the rough-and-tumble Big Ten -- Cook will need to gain strength this offseason. He weighed only 231 pounds last year, but is aiming for 250 by the season opener. To bulk up, Cook is lifting weights and working at a construction company in Champaign for the second straight summer. He has also found that eating four meals a day is key. Cook is already up to 245, thanks to his own home cooking this summer. "I've been eating, and not skipping meals," he says. "In high school, you're running around a lot, so you don't have time for meals." The additional pounds should also help Cook with his man-to-man post defense, which will be stressed more in Self's system. "We switched a lot last year," Cook says. "[Next season] we're going to be responsible for the man we're on, and if the guy scores on you, you know, it's on you." In that case, Cook still has some work ahead of him. A couple of weeks ago, Joyce, Brian's first basketball coach, showed her son that she can still school him one-on-one -- with a bit of help. "She won't let me guard her anymore," Cook says. "I have to stay like three feet from her, and she has a jumper on her." In this most recent battle of the Lincoln, Ill. Cooks, Joyce beat Brian, 10-9. Note: Cook made the final cut for the U.S. 20-and-under junior world championship team.
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