PROVIDENCE — Dave Gavitt always has said that the history of Providence College basketball was written by kids who achieved their basketball fame in college, not high school.

Get ready for another one.

His name is Marshon Brooks, and he is going to be the Friars’ next great player.

He is a junior from Stone Mountain, Ga., one of those kids who came to PC with few trumpets playing, a skinny kid who spent his first year in the shadows, with the kind of body that looked like he should be in a high school game.

He’s also one of those kids who got recruited late, one of those kids who fell through the recruiting cracks, someone the Friars first saw when they were there to watch one of his high school teammates.

He played on an excellent high school team and had received interest from the likes of Alabama-Birmingham and College of Charleston, a kid who only had been 5-foot-10 as a high school sophomore, but by the time he got to PC he was 6-foot-5, all arms and legs. Suffice it to say that there weren’t a lot of Big East schools too concerned that some kid from Georgia named Marshon Brooks was a Friar.

“I used to be on the scout team as a freshman, and I always played the best player on the other team,” he says, “and the older guys would beat up on me. They were killing me.”

Then a funny thing happened.

It was early last season, in one of those nothing nonconference games that not a lot of people care about. But that was the night Brooks’ world changed, the night of his basketball coming-out party. It was the night his potential went out across the basketball world like a scream in the night, even if not a lot of people were around to see it.

He had 24 points in the first half alone, and 30 for the game, even if he played only 23 minutes, a night out of some basketball fantasy. And it was more than just the points, more than just the fact that he dominated the game. In retrospect, it was the moment that he saw his potential all but staring at him in the face.

“It was like the game started to get easy,” he says.

There’s no overestimating that.

That’s what separates the guys just hanging in the game from the ones who become the stars. It’s what happens at all levels of the game, from youth leagues to the NBA, for the one with the gift.

The game gets easy.

As it did for Brooks that night last year against Sacred Heart.

And that changed everything.

Until then, he was just another kid with his head full of NBA dreams, dreams as far away as the moon, the kind of dreams all kids have, the kind of dreams similar to buying scratch tickets and hoping to win the lottery. After that? After that, the dream got a little closer.

He averaged 10.6 points a game last year, seemed to get a little worn down as the Big East season dragged on. But you could see the ability, the potential. It was all there, a star on the rise. The athleticism. The ability to shoot the three. The sense that he still has a lot of game to grow into.

That’s the other thing to understand. Some kids come to college basketball almost as finished products, at least physically. They are here at this level largely because of their physical gifts, and once others catch up with those gifts there’s not always a lot of room for improvement. College basketball is full of former high school superstars who never seem to be able to find a second act.

Brooks is the opposite of that, the fact he keeps getting bigger, keeps filling out, keeps getting better right in front of our eyes.

“The sky’s the limit,” says coach Keno Davis. “It’s like you see a glimpse of it.”

Yes, you can.

Brooks certainly has seen a glimpse of it. Last summer, he spent three days at the Paul Pierce Skills Academy outside of Boston, along with some other select college players. He came out of that with a step-back jumper that he never had before, the same move Pierce routinely uses. He also came out of it with more confidence, a huge thing for a young player.

“That showed me I could play,” he says.

In August, he went back home to Georgia, playing every night in a center where there are seven courts and big-time games. In a sense, those games were a kind of a litmus test for him, playing against many guys he had played against all his life, guys he could measure his improvement against.

Now Brooks is close to 6-foot-6 and 200 pounds — still gangly, certainly, and still young looking, but a different person physically than when he first arrived in Providence.

He’s also different mentally, as if he’s come to know that he can be very good some day, can have the kind of college career he never could have envisioned back there in high school in Stone Mountain, Ga. As if he’s come to know that all his basketball dreams are now so close he can almost reach out and put them in the palm of his hand.

“I know I have all the tools,” he says.

“So you are ready to be a big-time player?” he is asked.

“I will be,” says Marshon Brooks. “No joke.”

No joke, indeed.

The Friars’ next great player.

breynold@projo.com