Audi Crooks wastes no time. Eleven games into Iowa State’s season, the 6-foot-3 junior forward is the nation’s leading scorer, averaging close to 28 points per game while playing less than 26 minutes per game. Her best performances can somehow be both clinical and overpowering.
Earlier this season against Valparaiso, Crooks set the Cyclones’ single-game scoring record with 43 points in just under 20 minutes. The low playing time was because of a stomach bug she was dealing with that night, but as she’s wont to do, she kept it moving. “The night didn’t start so well for me,” she explained afterward. “I came out in the first quarter and had to ditch my pre-game meal.” When she checked back into the game, she made up for lost time. Her pregame meal ditched, Crooks packed another 33 points into her final 14 minutes. It was no surprise that she waited just a couple weeks to break the record again. On a cool 19-of-25 shooting, she put up 47 points against Indiana. Fair enough. Why wait?
“I’m sure there are people who can guard me, but we just haven’t found one yet,” Crooks said with a smile in a SportsCenter interview last week. After Wednesday night’s Cy-Hawk rivalry game between No. 10 Iowa State and No. 11 Iowa—a 74-69 Cyclones win to snap a three-game losing streak in the series—don’t call off the search.
There’s no wasted movement with Crooks either. Her soft touch around the rim has set her apart from other college bigs since she was a freshman. Watch the slick turnaround fadeaway at 0:29 in the video here and tell me it isn’t the
rudest, coolest shot ever. Skill like that, combined with her strength, can be deadly. She puts opposing post players in impossible positions, the kind that wreck a team’s game plans and rotations, and—as Iowa found out—tend to end in trips to the free-throw line. (Crooks gets there about eight times a game, and has a 68.9 percentage from the stripe.)
This year, Crooks's footwork has a little more polish to it, too, and all these skills have propelled her to historic levels of efficiency. She's shooting 72.2 percent from the field; for anything close to these nightly scoring totals with these shooting percentages, you’d probably have to go back to the much taller Brittney Griner. Bill Fennelly is in his 31st season as head coach of the Cyclones, and even he couldn’t supply a comparison. “It’s not something I’ve seen, really, maybe ever,” he said.
An upcoming swing against tougher Big 12 opponents could tell us whether Crooks and Fennelly will enjoy some team success this year, too. At the 2024 NCAA tournament in Crooks's freshman year, the Cyclones gave Stanford a second-round scare but lost in overtime. Last year, Crooks got hers against Michigan in the second round, but a lack of shooting around her doomed the team again. That loss got people talking: Might she have better opportunity elsewhere? Transfer portal rumors swirled. Then came the Instagram post, addressed to Cyclone Nation, redolent of the “Thank you, fans!” messages athletes like to leave on the way out. “After much thought and consideration…quit asking!” Crooks's statement said. Quick and to the point. She didn’t have the time for distraction.
