MADISON, WIS. ? Norm Cook helped Kansas University’s basketball team reach the Final Four in 1974.

Tonight, Brian Cook could stop the Jayhawks in their quest for another Final Four berth.

Don’t expect the younger Cook to have warm and fuzzy feeling’s about playing his father’s old school when Illinois meets KU in the Sweet 16 at Kohl Center.

“We played four times over my career,” Brian Cook said of the Jayhawks. “I’m trying to make my own footsteps, my own way. I’m not trying to take any emotions out on Kansas.”

Norm Cook, a former All-Big Eight forward who played briefly in the NBA, began showing signs of paranoid schizophrenia when he was 24. Cook was abusive to his wife, Joyce, and they divorced in 1986 when Brian was 5. Since then, the elder Cook has been committed to mental health institutions nearly a dozen times.

Cook’s mother and sisters watch him play for the Illini tonight; his father, who has never seen his son play, will not attend.

Brian Cook was unwilling to talk about his father  whom he hasn’t seen in more than a year  when these teams met in the Sweet 16 last year in San Antonio, but Cook and his mother broke their silence in the Feb. 4 edition of Sports Illustrated.

Illinois coach Bill Self has said that he thought that talking about the past lifted a burden off the junior forward.

Before that magazine hit the newsstands, Cook had been held to single-digit points in four of the Illini’s previous eight games  and the Illini lost those four games.

In the first game after the article appeared, Cook scored 19 points in a victory over Michigan. The second-team All-Big Ten selection has scored in double figures in every game since, and the Illini have won 11 of their last 12.

Cook said he “could have cared less” about the SI article and that his midseason surge had more to do with his conversations with a sports psychologist and increased confidence.

“I just realized I had to do my best to help this team succeed,” he said. “My production is crucial to the team.”

The 6-foot-10 Cook will play a critical role again tonight when he’s faced with the task of guarding 6-10 Kansas All-American Drew Gooden.

“In our opinion, Brian Cook is playing about as well as any power forward in America, but he’s playing against a guy who  deservedly so  is the national player of the year, and if not, the runner-up,” Self said. “Brian is going to need to play well, no question, but it’s not just Brian versus Gooden. It’s about our whole front line being able to neutralize their front line.”

Cook knows what he’s up against. He played with KU post players Gooden and Nick Collison on USA Basketball developmental teams and against them in summer leagues.

“We know each other well,” Cook said. “It’s going to be fun. If I get position, I think I can score. I have to have that kind of confidence. I’m going to have to keep him from getting position and try to make him take a lot of jumpers.”

Cook averages 13.5 points and 6.6 rebounds. He’s considered a pro prospect, but he won’t be leaving school after this season. After all, he knows what happened to his father.

Norm Cook left Kansas after his junior season and played only parts of two seasons in the NBA before his life unraveled.

“I’m coming back,” Brian Cook said. “To me, there’s a lot more things than basketball. With the situation with my dad and everything, I know I have to have something to fall back on. Basketball’s not going to be around all my life.”