Alvin Brooks III spent eighth season as an assistant coach at Baylor before joining Mark Pope's staff at Kentucky prior to the 2024-25 season. He joined the BU staff on April 8, 2016, after spending the previous four seasons as an assistant coach at Kansas State.
Baylor has combined to go 194-72 during Brooks’ tenure, including a 102-39 record in Big 12 Conference play, 12-5 in NCAA Tournament games and 21-15 against top-10 ranked opponents. The Bears were ranked No. 1 nationally in four of Brooks’ eight seasons on staff, joining Duke, Gonzaga and Kansas as the only teams ranked No. 1 four times since 2016-17.
With Brooks’ assistance, the Bears have had seven selections in the NBA Draft, including four-straight top-19 picks (Davion Mitchell —9th, Jeremy Sochan —9th, Keyonte George — 16th and Ja'Kobe Walter — 19th). The Bears are the only program with four players picked in the top 19 over the last four seasons. BU’s seven selections since 2017 were the most in the State of Texas during that span.
In 2023-24 The Bears notched 20 wins for a sixth-straight year and became the only school in the country to secure a top-three seed in the 2021, 22, 23 and 24 NCAA Tournaments. With a win over Colgate in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament, the Bears joined Gonzaga, Houston and Kansas as one of four teams to win at least one NCAA Tournament game in five-straight tournaments. Facing the No. 1 strength of schedule, BU won 20 games for the sixth-straight season and won 11 Big 12 games, becoming the only team in the conference to win 11-or-more games in five-straight seasons.
Brooks helped the Bears become just the third team in Big 12 history to win back-to-back Big 12 Championships with a 14-4 mark in the league in 2021-22, earning BU a second-straight No. 1 seed.
Brooks helped the Bears to the best two-year run in program history in 2019-20 and 2020-21, winning 90 percent of their games with a combined 54-6 mark, including a 17-3 record against ranked opponents, and culminating with the first National Championship and Big 12 title in program history in 2021. The Bears were top-5 ranked for 29-consecutive AP Top 25 polls and finished the 2020-21 season with the nation’s third-longest active streak of 37-straight weeks ranked.
A Houston native, Brooks has 19 years of experience as an assistant coach at numerous collegiate levels. He began his coaching career at the junior college level, spending two years as an assistant coach at Arkansas-Fort Smith (2004-06), where he helped lead the Lions to the 2006 NJCAA Division I championship. He then spent one season on former Baylor assistant coach Grant McCasland’s staff at Midland College (2006-07), where he again won the NJCAA Division I championship.
Brooks then moved to the NCAA Division I level, where he has 14 years of experience. He spent three years as assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Bradley (2007-10), and then returned to his home state for two years as an assistant coach at Sam Houston State (2010-12). Brooks was on Bruce Weber’s staff at Kansas State for four seasons (2012-16), and he was hired to Scott Drew’s Baylor staff prior to the 2016-17 season.
Brooks helped Baylor to what was then the best season in program history in 2019-20, as the Bears finished 26-4 and were projected to earn an NCAA Tournament No. 1 seed before the postseason was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. BU reeled off a Big 12 Conference record 23 consecutive wins and spent five weeks ranked No. 1 nationally, the longest streak by any team since Kentucky in 2015.
The Bears got their NCAA Tournament No. 1 seed the following season and took advantage of it, winning six straight games to claim the program’s first national title. BU finished the season 28-2, including a 14-1 mark in Big 12 Conference play, a school-record 11 wins over ranked opponents and a perfect 7-0 mark against AP top-10 teams. Three Baylor players were named All-Americans, including Jared Butler as the first consensus first-team All-American in program history, along with Davion Mitchell and MaCio Teague as third-team All-Americans. Additionally, Mitchell swept National Defensive Player of the Year awards.
That success on the court translated to the recruiting trail, where Brooks helped the Bears sign the highest-rated class in program history for 2021. Baylor’s three-member class of Kendall Brown, Langston Love and Jeremy Sochan was ranked No. 4 nationally by ESPN.
Brooks helped the Bears to a remarkable turnaround in his third season, as BU finished 20-14 and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. BU was picked to finish ninth out of 10 Big 12 teams, and the Bears lost their leading scorer to a season-ending injury two games into conference play. Despite injuries to three additional starters, Baylor rallied to finish fourth in the Big 12 and secured a No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament, where they knocked off Syracuse in the first round.      Â
With its 2019 NCAA Tournament berth, Baylor extended its school-record to eight consecutive postseason appearances, making the Bears one of 14 teams to appear in every postseason since 2012.
In Brooks’ second season, Baylor made its seventh consecutive postseason appearance and finished with a 19-15 mark in 2017-18. The Bears advanced to the NIT second round before falling on a buzzer-beater against Mississippi State. Baylor was ranked as high as No. 16 nationally, extending a streak to 11 consecutive seasons ranked. After a slew of injuries led to a 2-7 start to conference play, Baylor rebounded with a five-game winning streak that included wins over No. 10 Kansas and No. 7 Texas Tech and a double-overtime win at Texas.
Brooks helped the Bears reach unprecedented heights in his first year with the program, earning the program’s first-ever No. 1 national ranking and a school-record fourth consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance in 2016-17. BU began the season with 15 consecutive wins, climbing from unranked to No. 1 nationally in an eight-week span. Baylor recorded wins over top-10 opponents three times in its first eight games, with victories over No. 4 Oregon, No. 7 Xavier and No. 10 Louisville, the last of which secured the 2016 Battle 4 Atlantis title. BU also defeated No. 10 West Virginia for a school-record fourth top-10 win.
The 2016-17 Bears tied a school-record with 12 Big 12 victories and earned a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament. BU defeated New Mexico State and USC to advance to the Sweet 16, and the Bears finished the season 27-8 and ranked No. 12 nationally.
At Kansas State, Brooks helped the Wildcats to one of the best stretches in school history with 79 wins and NCAA Tournament appearances in two of the last four seasons. He also played a major role in K-State’s first-ever Big 12 regular-season title in 2012-13, which included the second-most wins (27) and a tie for the most conference victories (14) in school history. Additionally, Brooks helped coach 10 players named to All-Big 12 teams while at K-State.
Brooks played the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 seasons at Midland College before transferring to Idaho State. He was named Academic All-Big Sky as a senior on the Idaho State basketball team in 2002. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in finance in 2002 and a master’s in athletics administration in 2003.
PERSONAL
Brooks married the former Tiffany Wafer in August 2012. The couple has two children -- Alvin Joseph Brooks IV -- born on July 10, 2014 and Austin Jay Brooks -- born on Oct. 26, 2015.
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Brooks is the son of Lamar head coach Alvin Brooks II, who has been a college basketball coach for over 30 years. The father-son duo faced each other in the 2021 Final Four, when the elder Brooks was an assistant coach at Houston. Brooks II was previously the Cougars’ first African-American head coach, leading the school to 54 wins from 1993-98. After stints with Billy Gillispie at UTEP, Texas A&M and Kentucky, Brooks II returned to Houston in 2010 to serve as associate head coach under former Texas Tech head coach James Dickey and remained on staff with the hiring of Kelvin Sampson. A 2019 inductee into the Lamar Cardinal Hall of Fame, Brooks II returned to his alma mater as head coach on April 1, 2021.