Days after Missouri hired him to be its men's basketball coach, Quin Snyder strolled into Glenda Rush's house in Kansas City, Mo., to recruit her son Kareem. Snyder spoke about Final Fours and building a winning team, something he knew a bit about from his playing days. He said he wanted to become Kareem's mentor, but he couldn't have known what it was like to be Kareem Rush.
Being Rush means jumping over one hurdle after another. First, there was overcoming the shadow of JaRon, his older brother, who always played on the same teams as Kareem and always seemed to play a bit better. Then, there was dealing with the specter of Myron Piggie, the summer league coach who gave him the $1,800 Kareem says he used to get the corsage, tuxedo and limo for the high school prom. Problem is the gift was illegal - very illegal - according to NCAA rules and resulted in the NCAA suspending Rush for nine games in his freshman season at Missouri. Now, there's the responsibility of being one of the most high-profile college basketball players outside of North Carolina.
How could Snyder understand? Now 34, he grew up in Mercer Island, Wash., a suburb five miles outside Seattle that was picturesque even before the Pacific Northwest became a tourist attraction. He's always had a lot going for him. In 1985, he was the best player on the best boys' high school basketball team in the nation, Mercer Island High. In April 1999, he proposed to his wife, Helen, and was picked by Missouri to become the youngest head coach in the Big 12. Somewhere in between, he earned an M.B.A., participated in five Final Fours as a coach and player, and earned the reputation as the most handsome coach in college basketball. He even graduated from Duke, for goodness' sake.
Rush almost didn't give Snyder what he wanted. Conventional wisdom at the time dictated that Kareem would head to UCLA to join brother JaRon, who had signed there the year before. UCLA would have taken him.
With his older brother gone, Kareem flourished at Pembroke High his senior year, won a state title and was named Mr. Show-Me Basketball for being the state's best player. He was one of the top recruits in the country, and top recruits generally shy away from average teams with first-year coaches, which is what Missouri was at the time.
But something Snyder said must have clicked with Rush. Snyder told Rush how he could be the impact guy right away while playing only two hours away from home. He could get away from JaRon's shadow and make a name for himself. The spiel worked.
"Coach Snyder was definitely the deciding factor with my going to Mizzou," said Rush, who averages 21.1 points and 6.7 rebounds as a sophomore forward for the No. 20 Tigers (12-4). "He got me here."
It turned out spectacularly last season. At UCLA, JaRon got in trouble with an agent and had to go pro before he was ready. Now he plays for a team in the American Basketball Association that nobody's heard of. Meanwhile, Kareem, now 20, became the best basketball player at Missouri since Anthony Peeler in the early '90s. As a freshman playing alongside All-Big 12 guard Keyon Dooling, Rush averaged 14.7 points and was named Big 12 co-Freshman of the Year. The Tigers appeared in the NCAA Tournament and finished 18-13, a record that made Snyder the most successful first-year coach in Missouri history.
This year, there's more of the same. In their second year, Snyder is trying to make a run at his stated goal, "breaking into the upper echelon of the league," and Rush is a good candidate for the All-America team. According to the Missouri Sports Information Department, national media keep asking to learn more about Rush, the man who can shoot from anywhere on the court, slam one down on the next drive and do it all with seemingly no effort. Plus, according to Snyder, he's still improving.
"He's doing really well, but I think there's more we can pull out of him and more he can pull out of himself," Snyder said. "If he is a better player, certainly we can accomplish a lot more as a team."
If the early part of the season is any indication, Snyder's Tigers will go as far as Rush will take them. He's scored 30 points or more in four games, and Missouri won three of those (the loss came in overtime to No. 22 Iowa on Jan. 13 when Rush scored a career-high 32). In the first week of December, Rush averaged 28 points and 6.5 rebounds in wins over DePaul and Saint Louis, and ESPN named him its national player of the week. Against Kansas State Tuesday, though, Rush scored only 12 points and the Tigers lost badly, 80-59, to an underdog team.
Tomorrow, the Tigers play No. 13 Virginia (12-3) in a nationally televised game that will put Rush and Snyder in the spotlight. Their relationship has grown tremendously since Rush took the leap of faith two years ago and became Snyder's first recruit at Missouri.
Maybe Rush believed in fate, the kind of fate that brings together a pretty boy from the suburbs and a burdened teenager from the city. His mom does. Every Oct. 30, Glenda Rush bakes Snyder a birthday cake. It's a special day for the coach and Kareem. Oct. 30 is Kareem's birthday too.
But it's probably just a coincidence.
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