Justin Brock arrived at Eastern no stranger to injury.

The freshman on Eastern’s men’s basketball team had them scattered throughout his athletic career.

Brock broke his foot in a go-kart accident when he was 13.

Gym class also proved to be dangerous for Brock, who broke two bones in his arm playing wiffle ball and his index finger playing volleyball.

The last injury Brock, a 6-foot-8, 240-pound center, received resulted in nine stitches in the back of his head from freshman Ousmane Cisse’s elbow earlier this season.

“We were playing five-on-five in the gym and Ousmane came down on the back of my head with his big, old elbow,” Brock said. “He gave (junior) Jake Byrne stitches in his chin and (freshman) Brandon D’Amico a black eye with that elbow of his. Cisse has lethal elbows.”

His mother, Sylvia Brock, said the reason he gets injured is because he of his competitiveness and risk-taking.

Justin would be playing basketball with his sister, who is six years younger, and he would play as hard as he could, Sylvia said.

That competitiveness proved vital this past Saturday as Brock scored nine points in only 13 minutes, helping Eastern defeat Morehead State and end the Panthers’ eight-game losing streak.

“It doesn’t matter what it is, if he likes it he will try so hard to be the best at it,” said Tim Smith, Justin’s cousin. “It could be basketball or Halo or whatever. If he wants to he will put a lot of time and energy into it.”

However, Brock did not always know that he wanted to play basketball.

It wasn’t until he moved from Fort Wayne, Ind., to Quincy at the age of 12 that he realized how much he loved the sport, his mother said.

“Basketball is huge in Quincy and he figured out he was good at it and he liked it so he stuck with it,” Sylvia said.

After about a year, his family moved to the small farm community of Liberty, not far from Quincy.

Brock said by his senior year he was the just about the only “city boy” on the basketball team.

“They didn’t lift weights at Liberty,” he said. “You got all your strength from bailing haystacks and doing all that.”

Brock also remembered how the community came together for basketball games. When his high school team made it to the state competition his junior year, he was excited to think that other, bigger schools were there also and his small school was competing at that level.

Eastern head coach Mike Miller went and saw Brock in a game where he made three 3-pointers, scored 19 points and finished the game with six straight free throws, Smith said.

Miller said he noticed that Brock had a knack for scoring, was big bodied and had skill.

Brock has also been adjusting to the difference in the competition level from high school to college. He said in high school, teams had only one or two players on their team that were key players. At the college level, all five players are dangerous.

“It is a huge difference in the speed of the game too because non-stop you’re moving; you’re moving all the time,” Brock said. “In high school, it seems like you got so many more breaks.”

One break that Brock did not get was in high school basketball practice.

His high school head coach Jeff Kasparie said one day he noticed Brock was lagging and not getting anything done. He then sent Brock to the sidelines to run but soon noted that he wasn’t trying hard. Kasparie then threw a ball in his direction to change his pace.

“I meant for the ball to hit him in the side or bounce off the bleachers, you know just get him moving,” Kasparie said. “After I threw it, some of his teammates yelled ‘Justin, look out’ so as he turned his head. The ball hit him square in the face.”

College basketball has hit Brock square in the face as well; he hasn’t played in three games this year.

Miller said Brock has been especially productive in practice the last couple weeks and it has transferred into the games.

All he needed was a break – and not the injury type.