​KANSAS CITY – It was, in many ways, the same Audi Crooks we’d become accustomed to seeing.  Going all the way back to when she was scoring 2,734 career points and winning two Iowa high school state championships for Bishop Garrigan. Or, more recently, as a three-time All-American and cultural phenomenon with Iowa State women’s basketball. The beaming smile. The thoughtful answers. The bursting confidence. And, I suppose, it is still the same Audi Crooks that the basketball world — though, certainly, it started within our borders — has come to know and revere, for her prodigious scoring and her lucrative marketability. She’s just not in Iowa anymore. Crooks made her way through Big 12 basketball media days on Oct. 21 at the T-Mobile Center, where she played in three Big 12 Tournaments for Iowa State, not in the cardinal and gold of the Cyclones but in the black and orange of Oklahoma State after her splashy transfer this past spring. “It’s never easy to make those types of decisions,” Crooks, an Algona native, said of the transfer. “I was there for three years, so I’m not going to sit around and be callous about that. I have a lot of love and care for those people, and I always will.” Crooks’ departure was the last — and most significant — of the nine Cyclones who entered the transfer portal after a second-straight season of a disappointing first-round NCAA Tournament exit. Fellow stars Addi Brown and Jada Williams hitting the portal had Cyclone fans on edge, and Crooks’ departure pushed them over, putting the program in an existential moment. Things were so bad in Cyclone women’s hoops fandom that athletics director Jamie Pollard and coach Bill Fennelly felt compelled to make an announcement in April after the departures that Fennelly would return for a 32nd season.  Fennelly announced last week that it would be his last. It’s easy and understandable for Iowa State fans to be frustrated, disappointed and, yes, mad at Crooks for her choice. She said, though, she saw a depleted roster and questions about how Iowa State would replenish it with a championship-caliber supporting cast for her senior season. “Of the ones that transferred, I was the very last to leave,” Crooks noted. “At the end of the day, I had some really honest conversations about the ability to rebuild the roster.” So it was off to the portal, and, eventually, Oklahoma State, a program that is apparently flush with cash as it added both Crooks and Florida’s Liv McGill to headline the country’s top transfer class. Crooks and Oklahoma State have refuted a report that claimed Crooks was receiving $1.4 million in NIL and revenue sharing to join the Cowgirls, but it’s clear Oklahoma State’s financial situation is near the top of the sport. “I’ve got amazing supporters and donors who have had my back,” said Oklahoma State coach Jacie Hoyt, “and I think my staff was really smart being able to forecast what was going to come in the portal and with NIL.  “I