Trevon Brazile 'couldn't imagine' playing anywhere but Arkansas
The next step in Trevon Brazile’s basketball journey lies with the NBA.
The four-year Razorback played his last game in an Arkansas jersey this past March, and with no eligibility left, has been working out at the NBA Combine and for NBA scouts the last few weeks.
Brazile has looked sharp, too. He dropped 16 points with nine rebounds in one of the NBA Combine scrimmages and most mock drafts have him going somewhere in the second round.
How he got to where he is, he said, is a credit to John Calipari and his staff, which helped him develop his game over the past two seasons.
“I got to give the credit to the staff at Arkansas,” Brazile told a scrum of reporters after a workout with the Sacramento Kings on Wednesday. “I’m not saying it’s easy, but things come a little bit quicker for me just because of the way they do their thing over there. It’s a lot of attention to detail, you just got to be consistent.
“We’re traveling from city to city to city, you got to bring it every day. They don’t care how much you’ve been flying, none of that. So just bringing it every play, every workout.”
Trevon Brazile’s journey from Arkansas to the pros
Brazile’s journey at Arkansas was not easy. After he transferred from Missouri as a rising sophomore, he tore his ACL just nine games into the 2022-23 season. He said that was, basketball-wise, the toughest piece of adversity he’s had to face.
Not just because of the physical injury, but the mental side as well.
“You get cleared in nine months, but it’s a mental edge to it also,” Brazile said. “It takes a minute for you to get back because you’re just sitting there watching it for nine months, then you kind of just get thrown back out there. It definitely took a little bit, but it was a difficult time though, for sure.”
When he did get back to the court, it wasn’t a smooth ride either. The 2023-24 season was the most tumultuous of the Eric Musselman era and ended with a 16-17 overall record and a second-round exit in the SEC to South Carolina.
Musselman left Arkansas after that season and went west to USC. The entire team, save for walk-on Lawson Blake, also left. John Calipari’s famous “I met with the team, there is no team,” quote is true.
That almost included Brazile, who entered the transfer portal. But after a few weeks, he opted to stick it out with the new coaching staff ahead of the 2024-25 season.
“He’s just a Hall of Fame coach,” Brazile said. “His resume speaks for itself. One of the main things he taught me was just the consistency part, you got to bring it every day. Not that I didn’t bring it every day before he got there, but he’s been around a lot of basketball, him and his staff, Kenny Payne, those guys.
“So they were just feeding into me, developed me for two years and they did a great job. They really prepared me for the process.”
Trevon Brazile shines under new coaching staff
The decision to stick around turned out to be a good one. He was relegated to a bench role for the better part of the 2024-25 season, but was elevated when Adou Thiero went down with a knee injury late in the season. He stepped in beautifully and posted double-doubles in four of the final seven games of the season.
The Springfield native had the option to return to college for his fifth and final season of college eligibility, and while he had options as to where he could spend it, he chose Arkansas.
“For me, my loyalty was strong at Arkansas,” Brazile said. “Like, I couldn’t imagine myself playing in another college jersey. The fans there are great. The coaching staff, when Cal and them came in, I was just like, ‘I can’t leave this place.’ I love that place.
“I got offered double the amount of money I was getting paid at Arkansas. I could have went and got paid somewhere else, but I knew nobody else was going to be able to develop me and be able to be hands-on with me like that staff.”
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