Before Christmas in 2017, Jacson McGowan issued a challenge to his teammate, telling then-freshman pitcher Cory Brooks that shortening up his arm motion would allow him to come back to Purdue after break throwing 95 miles per hour.

And thinking it was a good idea, Brooks — without the benefit of hindsight — grabbed a former high school teammate in Hilliard, Ohio, and started firing baseballs with the new mechanics.

It was great for about five throws, Brooks said, but then …

“I got to like the eighth one and felt my arm go numb and thought, ‘Oh man, that can’t be right,’” the right-handed redshirt freshman said Tuesday night, after his second career Purdue start, in which he threw four no-hit innings in a 10-1 win over Chicago State. “I threw two more and knew something was wrong. I tried to play it off and keep throwing but it got worse and worse.”

Brooks had blown out his right elbow, ending what had been a promising start to his freshman year. After a strong fall season, in which the 6-foot-2, 205-pounder had put himself in position to compete for Purdue’s open Sunday starter spot, Brooks was hurt. He tried to rehab before eventually opting for Tommy John; the surgery was May 3, 2018.

It’s been an impressively short recovery from Tommy John, an operation that often requires a 15-month recovery period. But Brooks has attacked his rehab. For the previous three Tuesdays, before the start vs. Butler April 16, he faced live batters before practice, with pitching coach Elliott Cribby giving instruction from behind the mound.

Brooks was scheduled to do so for two more Tuesdays, but his progress had been so far ahead that Purdue bumped him up to a start. Last week, he went two scoreless innings vs. Butler, allowing a hit while striking out three. Then vs. Chicago State Tuesday, it was four shutout innings with five strikeouts in 56 pitches. In all, he’s thrown 81 pitches across six shutout innings with eight Ks and no walks (although he has hit two batters).

“Cory wanted to start pitching two months ago in games, but we wouldn’t let him,” Coach Mark Wasikowski said. “It’s interesting because when you’re around young people as much as we are, it’s oftentimes about ‘How bad do you want it?’ … Cory’s makeup is really solid. Things don’t rattle him. That’s the biggest thing we missed with Cory, yeah, he’s throwing the ball over the plate, but he does it with an aura, a presence. It doesn’t surprise him when he throws the ball over the plate as much as he does. It surprises him when he doesn’t hit his spots. And so he has the stuff a champion is made of."

Brooks was frustrated he’d gotten himself hurt over Christmas break, and fearful, too. He wasn’t excited about telling Wasikowski, so he first broke the news to trainer Casey Kohr.

“And (Casey) said, ‘Well, I’m not telling Waz. You’re telling Waz.’ So I told Waz and he just looked at me and was like, ‘Are you serious dude?’” Brooks said. “We tried to rehab it for so long but it kept getting worse and worse. I had MRIs but they showed nothing, so it was one of those injuries they had to actually go in and cut it to see it.”

Now Brooks, who throws a fastball, curve and change, is continuing to get stronger. He still thinks it could be longer until he feels the same as before the surgery, but in the meantime, he’s going to continue to attack. It’s that approach that’s helped him.

He could figure big into Purdue’s last three Big Ten weekends.

“I kind of go out there with an ‘I don’t care’ attitude,” he said. “Stuff is going to happen. It’s baseball. Stuff is going to get away from you and there will be days you don’t have every pitch, so you’ve just got to go out there and throw strikes, let your defense play behind you. Very rarely do you see a pitcher just take over and dominate at this level, so you’ve just got to work with your defense.”

Feeling the need for a change after a weekend in which Purdue was 4-of-27 with runners in scoring position in a series loss at Rutgers, Wasikowski juggled the lineup in the win over Chicago State.

Among the changes, leftfielder Milo Beam hit in the leadoff spot, as Skyler Hunter moved down to the 3 hole. Ryan Howe was up from 6 to 2; Bryce Bonner from 2 to 5; Cole McKenzie from 3 to 4; and Zac Fascia from 4 to 6. It worked. All six had at least one hit and all but Howe tallied at least one RBI.

But the biggest shift might have come at the top. Beam, a junior, had only eight at-bats through the April 10 game at Indiana — and only one hit — but since the following game vs. Iowa, he’s been a regular in the lineup. Largely batting in the 8 spot, before Tuesday’s leadoff, he’s six for his last 16, raising his average from .125 to .292. The speedy outfielder was 2-of-3 with three runs and two RBI, one on a suicide squeeze, vs. Chicago State.

“I’m just trying to get on base any way that I can,” he said. “So if they’re giving me something with the short (bunt) game, I’m going to take it, or at least try to. And if they’re taking it away, I’m going to try to make hard contact on a good pitch.”

Beam, who was a late-inning defensive replacement during the second half of last season and was critical to Purdue’s Big Ten Tournament run, admits the start of his season was frustrating.

But he hung with it, thinking his time would come.

“You’ve got to work a lot on the side and make sure you’re ready for your opportunity when you come in,” he said.

Wasikowski is looking for more run production, so he figured moving Hunter into the middle of the lineup might be a good idea. As a 3 hole hitter the last two seasons, Hunter recorded 34 and 39 RBIs.

“I think we’ve stunk, flat-out,” Wasikowski said. “I don’t think we’ve played good offensively, and so in a nutshell I didn’t want to keep rolling the same thing out there, it wasn’t working. I don’t know that people had really deserved a lot, but sometimes that doesn’t matter. Sometimes, you shake it up and do something different, see what works. In this case, we made some decisions and it worked for a day, let’s see if it works for two days.”

Sophomore Andrew Bohm was pushed up to a Friday start last week and delivered, giving up only a run in 6 1/3 innings. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough as Purdue's offense faltered in a 2-0 loss at Rutgers.

More from Bohm below.

After taking on Purdue Fort Wayne at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Purdue (14-25 overall, 6-8 in the Big Ten) stays out of the conference while welcoming in SEMO for three over the weekend.

Purdue, which is in 10th place in the Big Ten (and top eight make the tournament in Omaha), is at the start of a nine-game homestand. It hosts 12th-place Michigan State when Big Ten plays resumes May 3.

The Boilermakers need to start a run.

“It’s now or never,” Wasikowski said. “That’s the obvious. Our backs are way up against the wall. We’ve been crummy and we’ve been really, really good for long stretches in games, but all the sudden we’ll dismantle and really lose games, not have people beat us, but lose games. It’s now or never. We get hot and play ourselves into the tournament and the hottest team usually wins the tournament, so those are the goals for us right now.”

Rutgers has won back-to-back Big Ten series, the first a sweep of Michigan State that represented their first 3-0 conference weekend since joining the league.

Coach Joe Litterio then beat the Boilermakers in two of three over the weekend. We talked to the sixth-year Rutgers coach on the Big Baseball Podcast this week.

Notes: Trent Johnson (2-2) will start Friday's game vs. SEMO a week after the sophomore was excellent vs. Rutgers. Then, in what was his first start of the year, Johnson threw a two-hitter over six shutout innings. He had eight more strikeouts, bringing his total in 34 innings pitched this season to 52 (against only 13 walks). ... In his return from a long layoff, opening day starter Dalton Parker threw 1/3 of an inning in relief against Rutgers, then the ninth inning vs. Chicago State. ... Pitcher Ryan Beard's knee injury, suffered April 13 vs. Iowa, is an ACL. ... Purdue had a program-record 10 steals vs. Chicago State, three each by McKenzie and Tyler Powers.

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