Three whose careers are on the upswing

Tara Starks, Lu’Cye Patterson and Kendall Brown have taken important steps in furthering their careers and futures. Let’s take a look at what has happened to them in recent months.

Tara Starks
Starks was named the new head girls’ basketball coach at Hopkins High School last month. Starks replaces Brian Cosgriff, who led the Royals for 21 seasons and seven state championships.

One of the state’s top AAU coaches, Starks starred as a player at Minneapolis North during the early 1990s and later became an assistant coach to Faith Johnson-Patterson.

She served as North’s head coach for one year after Johnson-Patterson left to lead DeLaSalle. Her daughter TT Starks starred as a seventh-grader on that team before moving on to an outstanding career at Hopkins.

Starks also served as coach and mentor to UCONN’s Paige Bueckers, the nation’s number-one-ranked high school player in the class of 2020.

Lu’Cye Patterson
Patterson, a 6’-2” guard from Minneapolis, will attend Missouri State University next year on a basketball scholarship over offers from Vanderbilt and Idaho State.

Patterson burst onto the scene as a sophomore in 2018 when he led Brooklyn Center to the Class 2A state tournament two years ago. He left Brooklyn Center after that season and spent the next two years at Minneapolis-based Minnesota Prep Academy, where he averaged 21.2 points, 7.2 assists and 6.7 boards per game during a 25-9 run in the Grind Circuit basketball league.

Kendall Brown
Brown, a 6’-7” guard and former East Ridge boys’ basketball star who now plays at Sunrise Christian Academy in Bel Aire, Kansas, recently committed verbally to play at Baylor University over numerous Division I offers.

The senior guard played at Sunrise Christian Academy during his junior season after leading East Ridge to the Class 4A state tournament in 2019. During that season he teamed with his brother Courtney Brown Jr., a then-6’-7” senior. The older Brown is a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

According to 274Sports, Brown was offered scholarships to Minnesota, Iowa, Iowa State, Nebraska, Texas, Illinois, Arkansas, Texas A&M and Arizona.