NC State PG Zoe Brooks sees room for improvement despite career-high
Zoe Brooks is NC State’s starting point guard— a role she embraced and thrived in at times as a freshman. This year, in her second season of college basketball, she’s likely going to hold down that role from now through March and, if this team returns to last year’s heights, April as well.
Head coach Wes Moore wants this team to push the ball, and Brooks bears a lot of that responsibility. NC State started four guards during its 80-55 win over East Tennessee State Tuesday night, and the sophomore guard took command over the offense as the game progressed.
She scored a career-high 21 points against the Buccaneers, attempting 14 field goals that tied her highest total from last year. Brooks missed her only field goal of the first quarter and turned the ball over twice in the first 10 minutes. The sophomore was easing into the game but quickly flipped a switch.
“I felt like I was turning the ball over in the beginning because I wasn’t aggressive,” Brooks said. “I feel like I still had to get my jitters out, but when I started being more aggressive, I thought that’s when the floor started opening up.”
In the second quarter, she put up 6 points and helped NC State score 11 of the half’s final 15 points. ETSU held the Pack to 29 points in the first 20 minutes, and both Brooks and graduate guard Madison Hayes credited an impressive effort from the Buccaneer defense.
They limited the Pack to a 39 percent shooting mark and forced 12 turnovers. At times, the players a tough whistle and self-inflicted errors visibly frustrated the coaches and players as NC State tried to push the pace at a blistering tempo.
“We’ve just got to keep pushing the ball no matter if they stop us or not because somebody’s going to be open,” Hayes said. “There’s always going to be miscommunication somewhere. We’ve just got to keep our head up. Zoe’s good at that.”
Brooks maintained her faith in her own ability after a hard-fought opening half of the season, and it paid off as the Wolfpack won the final two quarters by 22 with her pacing the team. The point guard scored 7 points in the third and 7 more in the fourth.
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“I thought she did a better job of attacking and getting into the paint some and getting some jumpers, and then it never hurts to hit a couple of threes or whatever too,” Moore said.
She put up 6 shots from behind the arc— more than any contest during her first year in Raleigh— and knocked down 2.
“I still feel like I have to shoot better and make more threes, but I’m definitely a lot more confident this year in shooting,” Brooks said. “I know that, as the season continues, I’m going to make those threes.”
After the game, Brooks and Hayes made it clear that they know, if NC State comes out with a similar performance against No. 1 South Carolina Sunday, it won’t end well for their squad, especially on the boards.
But they also know this team is capable of more than it showed for most of the win over ETSU.
“They definitely watched us, and I think that for the first half, they were probably like, ‘Oh, they’re not that good,’… because we didn’t look crazy, I’m not going to lie,” Brooks said. “But I think that we’re going to give them a good game, and we can beat them.”
