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Katie BarnesMar 8, 2026, 07:20 AM ET
- Katie Barnes is a writer/reporter for ESPN.com. Follow them on Twitter at Katie_Barnes3.
AUDI CROOKS SLAMS into her mother. She bounces the basketball onto the cramped and cracked driveway and backs her way toward the hoop planted in her tiny side yard. A discarded shovel no more than 13 feet from the basket serves as the 3-point arc. Piles of snow mark the out-of-bounds lines.
Audi, just in middle school, gets to the hoop with a drop step she learned from her opponent. Michelle Cook had been a high-scoring back-to-the-basket center who wore No. 55 at Bishop Garrigan, the Catholic high school in their tiny town of Algona, Iowa.
“We had a lot of bonding moments and arguments in the driveway,” Cook says. “But it gave us something to do that we were in full control over. We were very competitive, and we had a lot of fun with it. No matter what time of year it was.”
Audi makes the bucket over her mom, but she is aiming for something more.
In that driveway, Audi discovered how to maneuver her large frame through tight spaces. She learned how to stay light on her feet and finish gracefully through contact, even if that contact was a block attempt from her mom.
“When I started beating her, she didn’t want to play anymore,” Crooks says.
“Yeah, it’s not as fun anymore,” Cook says.
Crooks is now a 6-foot-3 junior center at Iowa State and the nation’s second-leading scorer. The Cyclones struggled down the stretch this season, but Crooks has commanded attention. She will be one of the most dominant forces in the women’s NCAA tournament starting next week, if Iowa State sticks around. She averages 25.5 points, while shooting 64.7% from the field, and 7.8 rebounds per game. She’s second on Iowa State’s all-time scoring list. She has scored 30 or more points in eight games this season and surpassed 40 in four.
But her success is met by more than a smattering of boos. Some people criticize her body. They say she’s out of shape. They say she doesn’t play defense. The opinions are everywhere — online, in arenas, and, sometimes, to her mom’s face.
“Being strong is something that I’m proud of. Being big is something that I’m proud of,” Crooks says. “I’m not going to shy away from those things.”
Crooks gets her strength from her mom, from her late dad, from the lessons she learned on that cracked and cramped driveway, from the love she gives and receives in tiny Algona.
SIX GIGGLING MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRLS sit in the front row of a large and otherwise empty classroom at Algona Middle School. They all play basketball, and on this unseasonably warm February day, they’re here to talk about Audi Crooks.
“Inspiring.”
“Powerful.”
“Awesome.”
“Generous.”
“Kind.”
“Caring.”
They remember her from before. They see her now.
Ashton Rummel recalls seeing Crooks play when Rummel was in fourth grade. Bishop Garrigan was playing in the 2023 1A state championship game for the fourth consecutive season. Crooks scored a record 49 points that day to lead Bishop Garrigan to a 68-57 victory and a second straight state title.
Twins Alyshia and Addison Berte ran into Crooks while they were out to dinner celebrating their birthday — there’s debate, but they agree to disagree that it could have been their 11th. They went to Cinco de Mayo, known as just Cinco to the locals. Crooks was back home and eating dinner there. It’s her favorite restaurant (she describes it as “f—ing gas”). The Bertes walked over to her table and asked for a picture. Crooks happily obliged.
“If you’re in a small town, your options are kind of limited,” Addison Berte says. “But she defied that and she did what she wanted to do with her life. And I think that’s really cool.”
On Feb. 15, this group of girls — and their coach — traveled two hours down to Ames to watch the Cyclones take on Kansas State. Hilton Coliseum rocked with 10,746 fans that afternoon. From their seats behind one of the baskets, they cheered and watched as Crooks scored 20 points and grabbed nine rebounds and Iowa State won.
“She’s gotten a lot better,” Alyshia Berte says.
“She doesn’t have a bad attitude on the court,” Rummel says. “You always notice that about Audi. No matter what, she’s always going to have a smile on her face and keep working.”
Though Crooks was unable to greet the group, she feels their love.
“It’s like a tight-knit community, slash like family,” Crooks says. “Without a doubt, [Algona] has supported me in high school and throughout my college career so far. That’s fun.”
Crooks typically makes it back to Algona three or four times a year. A local clothing store called Threads has carved out about a quarter of its space for an Audi Crooks display, stocked with Iowa State shirts and gear sporting her embroidered signature and No. 55. After a big game, orders spike. Owner Tricia Garry says she has sent merch as far away as France.
“I can hardly go anywhere in Ames,” Crooks says. “But I definitely can’t go anywhere in Algona without somebody saying hey or stopping to chat.”
CROOKS CALLED HIM POPS. As a kid she often traveled 40 miles south down U.S. Highway 169 to visit her dad, Jimmie Crooks, in Fort Dodge. Audi, who lived with her mom, stepfather and stepbrother, cherished the time with her dad. Every other weekend, Michelle met Jimmie halfway between Algona and Fort Dodge with Audi. When Jimmie’s health declined, Michelle drove Audi all the way to his door.
Audi describes her dad as her best friend. He played basketball in high school and college. Like Audi does today and Michelle did before, he wore No. 55.
“Whenever he was at any of my sporting events, I would know he was there because I could hear him,” Crooks says. “He always had the deepest and the loudest voice in the room.”
Crooks and her dad bonded over music and faith in addition to their shared love of sports. After church, she’d stay with him and play the piano. He encouraged her to try other instruments. Today Crooks also plays guitar, drums, bass and trumpet.
Audi and Jimmie would talk on the phone as they watched basketball games, especially the Cy-Hawk games between Iowa State and Iowa. Often they’d place bets: sometimes it was $5, other times it was for who would do the dishes. Her love of the game was cultivated on those phone calls and in discussions with Jimmie about basketball as much as it was in the driveway showdowns with her mom.
Jimmie suffered a heart attack when Audi was 8. A few years later, his leg was amputated. He was diabetic. He was hospitalized with pneumonia when Audi was 14. She was 16 when he died in August 2021.
“Changed my entire life, changed my world,” Crooks says. “It was hard for me to play basketball again. I didn’t know if I was going to play basketball again because it was so deeply rooted in him.”
The word “Pops,” flanked by angel wings, is tattooed on her right wrist. A halo rests over Pops and underneath is written “Proverbs 3:6.” “In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your path,” Crooks says.
“I’m right-handed,” Crooks says. “So every basket that I shoot, he’s with me.”
She carries his spirit, too.
“I watched him go through a lot of hard things, but never once did he lose his faith,” Crooks says. “He had every reason in the world to be angry, sad, mean. But he just showed his love for life and the talents that God gave him. And so I try to do the same thing.”
THEY CALLED HER the Shaquille O’Neal of girls’ basketball in the video that propelled Audi Crooks beyond Algona, beyond Fort Dodge and beyond Iowa. Crooks had been playing in her driveway, for a small high school, and then a small travel team. She had attended camps at Iowa State. But when she dominated for the CY Select Wolves AAU team, scouts and fans across the country chimed in.
In the YouTube video, Crooks blocks a shot. And then two more. She catches the ball deep in the paint and lays in an easy bucket. She fires an outlet pass three-quarters of the court. She helps an opponent up after knocking her to the court.
“I grew up watching the little Shaquille O’Neal Gold Bond commercials and seeing Shaq as like the idol … that was super cool,” she says. “So to be compared to an iconic center that was in the NBA was cool.”
Most of the comments applauded her footwork, her soft touch and her vast potential. But even then, some viewers focused on her frame.
“It was hard for me to process and kind of understand at that age that, like, those people are so far removed from what I’m doing, yet so heavily opinionated,” Crooks says. “But I think over time I just kind of learned that, you know, I’m doing something right. To be on all these platforms and to have all these people taking time out of their day to say something good or bad, I must be doing something right.”
Even then, Cyclones coach Bill Fennelly saw a whole bunch that was right in her game.
Crooks committed to Iowa State after winning her first state championship as a junior. She made the decision in her bedroom after writing a pro-con list. She liked that Fennelly and his staff cared about her beyond basketball. “They were always in my gym or at my AAU stuff. They were really just relentless, in a good way, about me going there.”
Crooks felt energized on her visits to Hilton and excited that she’d get to play in front of a crowd almost twice the size of her hometown.
“All through high school [people said] she was good because she played at a small school,” Bishop Garrigan coach Brandon Schwab says. “Out of high school, everyone was saying that, ‘Oh, her game won’t translate to the college level.’ And now look what she’s doing. Anytime you’re going to tell Audi she can’t do something, it’s going to ultramotivate her.”
Says Fennelly: “We found quickly that that transition was not going to be as hard as most people thought.”
IT LOOKED FOR all the world that Crooks was down to the final 20 minutes of her freshman season. Iowa State had trailed Maryland by as many as 20 points in the first round of the 2024 NCAA tournament, and they huddled in the halftime locker room down 16.
Crooks will never forget the conversation.
“[Assistant] coach Emily Hatfield looks at me and goes, ‘Well, why don’t you have 30? Like, why don’t you just score 30?'” Crooks says. “I said, I’ll make it better, I’ll score 40. And that actually happened.”
She finished with 40 on the nose after shooting 18-of-20 from the field and 10-for-10 in the second half. She set the record for most points in a single game by a freshman in NCAA tournament history. She also had 12 rebounds in Iowa State’s seven-point win.
“I am somebody that tries to be a woman of my word,” Crooks says.
Iowa State lost to Stanford in the second round of the 2024 NCAA tournament, but Crooks had cemented herself as a breakout star.
As a sophomore, she averaged 23.4 points and 7.5 rebounds per game, but the Cyclones lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament to Michigan after beating Princeton in the First Four.
The comments about Crooks on social media followed her from the Maryland win to the Michigan loss. They are a combination of admiration and admonishment of her size. A post celebrating a dominant performance can be followed up by a person saying she feasted, and not kindly.
“Nobody can depreciate the numbers that I put up. Nobody can depreciate my play,” she says. “So then they come after me personally, and it’s like, that’s not what I’m here for. I didn’t sign up for that.”
Crooks is a big, strong person, and she isn’t looking to make herself smaller to fit other people’s expectations. She has always been tall and always been strong. Teachers often asked her to get things off the higher shelves when she was a kid. She uses her body effectively while playing a game that is a chess match of physical attributes.
“My family, we’ve always been bigger, stronger people,” Crooks says. “Like tall, big humans. That’s just kind of who we are. That’s our identity. I’ve utilized that as more of a tool because this body has gotten me so far in life, and it enables me to do what I do on the court.”
Sometimes the negativity spills over from the internet. Cook has been approached by people asking her about the food she fed Crooks growing up or when she would “get healthy.” There was one road game this year where Cook could hear a fan heckling her daughter, referring to her as a “hog” and a “pig.”
“If I hear it, she’s hearing it,” Cook says. “Everybody’s hearing it. And everybody knows it shouldn’t be happening. … It’s not easy, and it hurts as a mom.”
Crooks, however, doesn’t lash out. She doesn’t get into fights on social media. She doesn’t return fire at hecklers. She defaults to a smile.
“I think she was listening when I was raising her, and I think she leans on her faith, and I’m glad that she has that,” Cook says. “I always tell her, you have two choices, and the choice is up to you on how you respond. … Not everybody’s going to be your cheerleader. But as long as you’re proud of yourself and your relationship with God is where it needs to be, then that’s all that matters.”
Fennelly says there are days when he worries that the attention and negativity are dragging Crooks down.
“She deals with it a hell of a lot better than I do,” Fennelly says. “She handles it with amazing grace, amazing maturity. For her as a young student-athlete, the social media presence is part of her brand. So you can’t just get rid of it.
“We live in a world now where mental health is such a huge deal. And, you know, you worry about that. You know, we worry about where is she mentally? We try and provide resources for all of our kids, but certainly Audi, and the thing about Audi, too, is she’s willing to ask for help if she wants it and she needs it. She’s not afraid of that.”
Her teammates marvel at her ability to keep a smile on her face while faceless critics try to bring her down.
“She’s able to find the joy in anything,” senior forward Sydney Harris says. “And that can be hard sometimes.”
ADDY BROWN AND CROOKS dangle their feet over the water as they sit on the dock. With their lines cast into the lake at Ada Hayden Heritage Park, the basketball stars wait for the next bluegill or bass to take their bait.
They wait some more.
“It makes us both work on our patience,” Brown says, laughing. “We usually don’t catch a whole lot of fish when we’re out there, but we have a good time just hanging out together and chatting.”
Brown grew up in Derby, Kansas, and often fished with her family. When she packed up for Ames, her fishing poles made the cut. Crooks spotted them immediately. She grew up fishing in Algona, learning on her maternal grandfather’s knee. The first fish she remembers catching on her own was a 20-inch catfish at the pond behind the Pioneer plant where her grandfather worked.
The next time Crooks went back home to Algona, she grabbed her fishing gear. “It lets us bond together while also doing something that we grew up doing,” Brown says. “It just gives us, like, a sense of home.”
And a sense of silence, of peace.
“It’s kind of a space to go to clear your mind,” Crooks says. “The world is so busy. The lifestyle being a student-athlete is so busy and so hectic. To be able to sit down somewhere and be in nature, think and fish, it’s fun.”
Crooks has taken to keeping fishing poles in her car year-round. Her mom has suggested she take them out, but Crooks likes to be prepared. “Well, you never know,” Cook recalls her daughter telling her. “We might go.”
Every offseason, Crooks and the Cyclones head up to Clear Lake for a retreat at Fennelly’s lake house. Part of the tradition is karaoke, which, of course, turned into a competition.
Brown, Crooks, and Arianna Jackson — their group goes by Triple A — have competed together the past two years.
“We take it very seriously,” Brown says. “We’re undefeated.”
They make costumes and prepare choreography. No one else is that serious. But Crooks wanted to show out and keep the winning streak alive, even if the jury is just the coaching staff and teammates. They picked “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5 and lifted some choreography from the Nickelodeon show “Victorious” they all grew up watching.
Spoiler: They won.
“She was like, ‘We got to go off this year,'” Brown says of Crooks. “‘Got to get costumes. Step our game up.'”
TWO HOURS NORTH of Ames, the low structures of Algona, population 5,500, pop up along the horizon of flat farmland. The world’s largest Cheeto, about the size of a Cadbury egg, graces a purple pillow at Emerald’s Fine Food & Libations. It’s the town’s main tourist attraction. The nearest major hospitals are 143 miles away at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, or 129 miles away in Des Moines.
Like many of her neighbors, Crooks didn’t grow up wealthy. She always had what she needed, but she wasn’t drowning in extras. Cook is a social worker, and she shares some of what she experiences with her daughter. “We have it pretty good compared to what I see during the day,” Cook says.
Crooks began giving back to her community as soon as she went to college, and she formalized the Audi Crooks Foundation in 2025. The foundation focuses on supporting young people in need. It helps with musical instrument rentals, sports fees and settling negative balances on school lunch accounts. The foundation has provided gas cards for hospital trips and shoes for kids. Community members can request support through the foundation’s website. The foundation strives to deliver help with urgency.
“We never want to make anybody feel embarrassed,” Cook says. “A lot of it’s no questions asked. And I’ll say to Audi, ‘Well, what if they’re abusing it?’ And she’ll say, ‘Well, that’s on them. That’s between them and God.'”
Days before Crooks opened her junior season with an exhibition against the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that SNAP benefits — commonly referred to as food stamps — wouldn’t be issued on time in November due to the federal government’s shutdown.
Cook was worried. Local food banks were already struggling. Families in the area would suffer. She shared her concerns with her daughter.
“I explained to her, just as a social worker, that there’s a lot of people out of their food benefits before the next month starts,” Cook says. “They couldn’t make it stretch.”
Crooks heard her mother’s concerns and created Knock N Dash. The program delivered food to families in Kossuth County who requested support through the foundation’s signup form.
Crooks led the shopping effort at the Sam’s Club in Ames. She helped fill shopping carts with pasta, bread, canned vegetables, hot chocolate and Easy Mac. She helped load the food onto trailers alongside volunteers who hauled the food two hours up the road. Back in Algona, volunteers packed black bags in the back room at Threads. It was important to Crooks that the bags not be see-through. Volunteers delivered the food by ringing doorbells and dropping the bags outside the door.
“She believes there should be no face-to-face contact, because that is embarrassing for some,” Cook says.
Crooks’ foundation did three rounds of deliveries in November.
“It was really a community coming together,” Cook says.
CROOKS DABBED HER watery eyes with the back of her wrist. Standing on the free throw line with the opportunity to ice the game for Iowa State, she couldn’t hear her dad’s booming voice, but she felt his presence. Before the game, she had written “Pops” with a heart on her shoe.
It was Iowa State vs. Iowa on Dec. 10. Both teams were undefeated. And the Cyclones clung to a three-point lead with 15.2 seconds left. Crooks took a deep, shaky breath before the referee bounced her the ball.
Crooks dribbled, lifted the ball into her shooting pocket, and flicked it toward the bucket. It clanged off the front of the rim. She shook her head in disappointment. Fennelly, who was standing on the sideline, pointed upward. He didn’t have to say anything. Crooks knew what he meant. Their dads were watching.
Fennelly’s own father died before the 2019 Cy-Hawk game. He wrote a note to his late father on the play sheet in his hand. It read, “Love you dad. This one’s for you. Beat the Hawks.”
Crooks made the second free throw, her 30th point, and Iowa State won the game.
“I was just happy. I just felt a lot of joy,” Crooks says before considering what her dad would have said. “Probably complained that I needed some more rebounds. But then after complaining, he would tell me that he was proud.”
Crooks scored 30 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. More than 14,000 rocked the stands at Hilton, including Hawkeyes fans. It was intense. It challenged Crooks. But most importantly, “We got a dub,” Crooks says.
That moment ended up being one of the final highlights in Iowa State’s season. After starting the year 14-0, the Cyclones have struggled to recapture the form they had against the Hawkeyes. They hobbled into the postseason at 22-8 and crashed out against Arizona State — a team they beat 90-64 on Feb. 18 — in the second round of the Big 12 tournament. The Sun Devils swarmed Crooks in the paint and held her to four first-half points. She finished with 21 in the 77-68 defeat. The Cyclones are now projected as a 9-seed in ESPN’s latest Bracketology.
After all the points, after all the rebounds, after all the praise and after all the criticism, Crooks isn’t sure what’s next. She knows she wants to play professionally, but she plans to finish college first. When asked if she will play at Iowa State, she pauses. She takes a breath. And doesn’t answer the question.
But she does have an answer for all those who still doubt. For those who said she couldn’t make it out of her driveway to a big-time college. For those who still say she can’t make it in the WNBA. For those who are saying Iowa State can’t make a deep tournament run.
“The people that criticize me for that certainly couldn’t stop me in the paint,” Crooks says. “It’s something that you see, you hear, but you’ve got to wash it off your back. Because here I am on ESPN, and here you are watching.”