Zoe Brooks' defensive growth shows in NC State's overtime win over Syracuse

NC State knew what it was going to get with freshman guard Zoe Brooks on the offensive end when she arrived in Raleigh. The No. 9 recruit in the country poured in 30 points a night routinely in high school, but the college game was going to put an emphasis on Brooks’ defense. 

While she’s just 29 games into her collegiate career with the Wolfpack, Brooks has taken leaps and bounds when it to that end of the floor. So much so that NC State coach Wes Moore turned to the Plainfield, N.J., native when he needed someone to shut down Syracuse’s Dyaisha Fair on Thursday night. 

That was quite the assignment for a first-year player, but Moore was in need of an on-ball defender that could keep up with the speedy 5-foot-5 guard. Fair scored 11 points in the first half with junior guard Saniya Rivers on her, but the switch to the smaller Brooks paid off. 

Brooks limited Fair to just 2 points on 1-of-5 shooting in the second quarter, and then she contained the NCAA’s fifth-highest point scorer in Division I women’s basketball history to just 13 points in the second half and overtime. That helped No. 12 NC State to a 75-71 win over No. 19 Syracuse at Reynolds Coliseum. 

“Still a work in progress, but she’s come a long way,” Moore said of Brooks’ defense afterwards. “I’m proud of her. She did a heck of a job.”

Brooks made Fair work for her points. After an efficient 4-for-4 opening period from the field, Fair finished the night a combined 9-of-21 from the field as Brooks hounded her for much of the contest. 

Moore and the Wolfpack wanted Brooks to deny the ball before Fair could even touch it. Good luck with that, but Brooks was able to do it more than not. 

Brooks’ biggest play on defense came on just that — denying a feed to Fair near midcourt , which is also where the guard’s range opens up, in overtime. The freshman bulldog defender ended up poking the ball away for a steal, which brought a raucous Reynolds Coliseum to its feet. 

From there on, NC State had the momentum in the extra time, and it was able to pull away down the stretch to snap a two-game losing streak. 

“She’s tough, as you can see, she was going off in the first half,” Rivers said of guarding Fair. “We were a little nervous, but Zoe did a great job on her tonight. We’ve got to keep that going and keep locking in on personnel.”

Though Brooks was uber effective on the defensive end for the Pack, she was able to score 8 points, but she added five assists, which tied Rivers for the team most. Brooks, who has been the Pack’s point guard as the sixth person in the game, has a lot on her plate when she’s in the game.

Rivers understands that. She was the team’s point guard by necessity last season and has been this year when Brooks is not on the court. The former South Carolina transfer thought that Brooks’ ability to balance being the floor general while also locking down one of the best players in the country showed her immense in-season growth.

“Just seeing her tap into that role, and also be so good tonight on the defensive end, just shows that she’s growing,” Rivers said. “In high school, you’re scoring all the points, you’re getting the defensive stops. These girls in college are a different breed — Fair is a different breed. Even I wasn’t stopping her and I’m a junior about to be a senior. Big shoutout to Zoe for shutting her down, she did her best.”

Rivers was not the only one to notice Brooks’ improvement on the defensive end, either. Graduate forward River Baldwin, one of the two oldest players on the team, thought that Brooks took a leap on the defensive half of the court.

“She just really flipped a page there and she proved that tonight. Fair is one of the top scorers in the NCAA. To see a freshman step up, bring that energy and shut her down, that was really big tonight.”