Escape Artist Missouri's coach survived an NCAA investigation, but did his reputation?

Not long ago Missouri's Quin Snyder was considered the best and
the brightest of the nation's young basketball coaches, the
odds-on favorite to succeed his mentor, Mike Krzyzewski, at Duke.
No longer. The Tigers were the nation's biggest disappointment
last season, tumbling from a preseason Top 10 ranking to a 16-14
record and missing the NCAA tournament. Last week Snyder took
another hit when the NCAA said that it had discovered nine rules
violations in the Missouri program.

It could have been worse. The NCAA was unable to support
allegations of player payoffs and academic fraud, and the Tigers
will not be barred from postseason play. But while Snyder, 37,
said he "accepts full responsibility," the fallout followed the
usual script: The coach apologized and kept his job, while his
assistants headed for the exits. (Lane Odom resigned last week;
Tony Harvey is on paid suspension and isn't expected to return.)
Yet restoring Snyder's image won't be easy. Since he took over in
1999, his program has accumulated more than two dozen minor
violations. Now SI has learned that Snyder provided a favor to an
out-of-work coach whom the NCAA interviewed twice during its
investigation of Missouri.

Jay Cyriac was an assistant at the College of Southern Idaho, the
school Uche Okafor attended before signing with Missouri in 2001.
(The NCAA looked into Missouri's recruiting of Okafor but found
no violations.) In June '03 Cyriac accepted a job as DePaul's
director of basketball operations, but the school rescinded the
offer, citing the NCAA's refusal to give him a clean bill of
health. Cyriac, 29, then moved in with his parents in Elizabeth,
N.J., and took a job as a furniture-store security guard.

Since last fall, though, Cyriac has also worked as a scout with
the Philadelphia 76ers, where his boss is general manager Billy
King, a friend and former teammate of Snyder's at Duke. Cyriac,
who shares a lawyer with Snyder, admitted that Snyder "put in a
call" to King last fall to help arrange the job for him. Was that
a payback to Cyriac, a coach with a tainted reputation who could
have implicated Missouri in the suspect recruitment of Okafor?
No, Snyder says; he was merely helping a colleague down on his
luck: "I was impressed with his work ethic and made a call on his
behalf, just as I am fortunate that many individuals have offered
to help me along the way." --Grant Wahl

COLOR PHOTO: DAVID E. KLUTHO HARD TIMES Trouble with the NCAA--and trouble winning--has sentSnyder's star falling.