Brooks’ Play Is ‘Money’ In Bank For James Wood Girls

Posted: January 23, 2016
By WALT MOODY

WINCHESTER — Her nickname is “K Money” and you can see why.

The James Wood girls’ basketball team can count on Keiana Brooks — like money in the bank — every time she’s on the court.

So far in her senior season, Brooks is averaging 20.6 points, 6.8 assists, 6.8 rebounds and 5.0 steals per game. She’s scored 20 or more in all but four of the team’s games.

And James Wood is doing pretty well. The Colonels are 9-4 overall.

Brooks started playing basketball at age 5 and figured out quickly she was pretty good at it.

Basketball sort of runs in the family anyway.

Her father Chad and his brothers played in high school and her grandfather Burrell Brooks is a legendary basketball figure in Warren County. Burrell Brooks was The Star’s Player of the Year in 1968 and has a community center named after him in Front Royal.

Even her younger brother Chandler, a sophomore, is a standout and the leading scorer for the Colonels boys’ team.

Basketball does take center stage in the Brooks household.

“We bond over it,” Keiana said. “We watch a lot of basketball and talk about basketball a lot.”

With all of the family success, Brooks doesn’t feel like she has to live up to the family name.

“I think my parents have really done a good job of not putting so much pressure on us and making us feel like we have to live up to a certain expectation,” she said. “They’ve always told us that if we don’t want to do it anymore that we don’t have to and to make sure that it’s fun. I don’t feel like I’ve had to live up to a certain standard.”

But make no mistake, Keiana’s own standards are high.

While she’s athletically gifted enough to play other sports, basketball is her focus. When she’s not playing for the Colonels, she’s involved year-round with AAU basketball.

Often before the rooster crows, you can hear the ball pounding in some local gymnasium.

“I put in a lot of work,” Brooks said. “I do a lot of work in the summer and now. I’m always in the gym. A lot of times, I’ll be in the gym at like 5 a.m.”

As a freshman coach, Krista Crites (who a season later would take over the varsity program) wasn’t sure what she was getting when Brooks showed up at practice. And, neither did Brooks.

“She came in as a freshman from home school very timid and they gave her to me,” Crites recalled. “Initially that probably wasn’t the best combination because I am a perfectionist and I expect above and beyond from my girls.

“My first year, she would kind of look at me like, ‘Are you serious?’ Sophomore year, it was, ‘Yeah, she’s serious.’ Junior year and now, she kind of knows pretty much what I expect of her.”

Crites admits that even those expectations were high, considering the youngster she was coaching.

“There were some times early that I forgot that she was a 14- or 15-year-old player,” Crites said of Brooks. “She has never played her age. She has always played above and better than most people her age.”

Coach and player bonded in a sort of unusual way.

Crites, also a former point guard, wore No. 14 during her high school career.

When it came time for Brooks to pick a number, No. 14 was there.

“I originally wanted No. 33 because that was my grandfather’s number,” Brooks said. “They were laying them out and No. 33 was way too big.

“It came down to No. 13 and No. 14 and I wasn’t sure which one to pick. Crites looked at me and said, ‘If you get No. 14, you’ll have a phenomenal season.’ I was like, ‘I might as well take a chance’ and I took it.”

“I didn’t lie to you then,” Crites said with a smile. “It started out as a joke, but it’s played well.”

And Crites admits Brooks has done No. 14 justice.

“I was good, but nothing like she is,” Crites said.

The hallmark of Brooks’ game is a fearlessness to drive to the basket. Though just 5-foot-5, Brooks will knife through the defense and take on the trees inside.

“I don’t like to play with fear,” Brooks said. “I’m pretty confident in my abilities. I know that driving to the basket is one thing I’m good at so I like to stick with what I’m good at.”

But she knows that often she’ll have to eat some humble pie.

“I get blocked all of the time, trust me,” she said. “I get blocked in practice all of the time. They make a big deal when I get blocked. They like to pick on me a lot.”

She’s willing to take the hits and the ribbing and her play becomes a nightmare for opposing coaches. Thanks to her quickness, she can beat both man-to-man and zone defenses off the dribble.

“It’s just hard to stop her from going to the basket,” said Millbrook’s Kevin Barr, whose team absorbed a 23-point night from Brooks in the Pioneers’ 72-64 win. “She handles the ball well and she’s just relentless trying to attack the rim. Against us, she made some shots that were just tough. She wasn’t even heading towards the basket, hitting some scoop shots and stuff like that.

“She can make some unorthodox shots that other people can’t make which makes her hard to guard,” Barr added. “She’s relentless on both ends. She gets a lot of steals and a lot of baskets that way. You either foul her and put her on the line and she shoots good foul shots (71 percent) or you’re giving up a shot that you don’t think she can make and she makes it. It’s tough.”

Knowing that Brooks will be the focus off opposing defenses, Crites will often put two or three players on her in practice. Brooks doesn’t mind that at all. As her assist numbers attest, Brooks is about much more than making shots. Her true joy is in giving.

“I love when someone else makes a basket,” she said. “It’s exciting. … I like to be well-rounded. I don’t like to focus just on points because I think there’s a lot more to basketball.”

“The pleasure and the joy of Keiana is that she is the most humble kid I’ve ever met,” Crites said. “As much as she does personally for herself, you would never know it. When you try to talk to her about what she has done, she will always say that, ‘I can’t do what I do without my teammates.’ That is very important to her.”

And Brooks genuinely looks likes she’s having a great time, which sets the tone for the Colonels.

“It’s a lot of fun when you get to play with a lot of your best friends,” Brooks explained. “We all get along really well. Playing with them is a lot of fun for me. When we do well, we are so excited for each other.”

“If she’s mad, she smiles,” Crites said. “If she’s sad, she smiles. If she’s happy, she smiles. She has a great personality and they feed off of it.”

But behind those smiles, Brooks is a driven competitor.

While some would walk off the floor after another 20-point, seven-assist night crowing about how good they were, Brooks is the opposite. While others are patting her on the back, she’s agonizing over what went wrong.

“You really couldn’t tell, but I’m a low-key perfectionist,” Brooks said. “I have high standards for myself and I’m falling short on those standards. I worry about all of the things I did wrong.

“People will tell me, ‘You had an amazing play.’ And, I’m like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I can tell you every turnover I had and how many times I got blocked.’ I only remember the bad things and that’s not always a good thing.”

So, she’s driven to work on those bad things. And, they are?

“What don’t I have to work on?” Brooks said. “Shooting. My outside shooting needs to get better. I’ve been working a lot on my off-the-dribble shooting. I think that’s improved but it’s not where it needs to be. My ball handling still needs to be better. My defense should be better.”

Crites knows that Brooks will put in the time.

“At anything that I have given her that I felt she needed to work on, she has done just that,” Crites said. “She may not always agree with me, but she does not question me. She just says, ‘Yeah, Crites,’ and goes on. She’s improved exactly how I figured she would.”

Brooks is not sure where her talent will take her once she leaves James Wood. She has colleges that are interested in her but she’s weighing her choices carefully.

“I’m not really sure about college, yet,” said Brooks, an honor student who expects to make her decision in the spring. “I’m still trying to work some things out. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do for a career and I really want to focus on that and not just basketball.”

Crites has no doubt that Brooks can play at the next level.

“Keiana is a very intelligent kid in general, but when it comes to basketball she still continues to amaze me at the level of intelligence she has on the basketball court,” she said.

Until then, it will be money in the bank for Brooks, who topped 1,000 career points earlier this week. She will finish second on the school’s career scoring list and already owns the assists and steals records.

“I don’t know how that got started, but I ran with it,” said Brooks of the nickname, which is now part of her Twitter handle. “I like how it sounds.”

— Contact Walt Moody at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Follow on Twitter @WinStarSports1