It Was So Close to Rush Week

It might have made a wonderful weekend. Glenda Rush gets a soft, dreamy sound to her voice when she imagines it.

“Two of my boys playing against each other in the Sweet 16. UCLA against Missouri and me cheering for both teams. Kareem and JaRon, they never played against each other. They were always on the same team. When UCLA beat Cincinnati, that’s the first thing that came to my mind. I wish JaRon was still at UCLA.”

Kareem Rush, a smooth, strong, wiry 6-foot-6 forward for Missouri, took two elbows to his lip, endured 21 stitches and still managed to star in the Tigers’ two upsets--over No. 5-seeded Miami and No. 4-seeded Ohio State--in the first two rounds of the NCAA West Regional last weekend.

For their efforts, the No. 12-seeded Tigers play No. 8 UCLA on Thursday night in San Jose in the regional semifinals.

From the moment the Bruins finished their double-overtime elimination of top-seeded Cincinnati on Sunday, Kareem Rush felt flutterings in his stomach.

He felt tremendous joy in the way he and his teammates had rallied from a stumbling stretch of late-season basketball that almost left Missouri in the NIT. He felt delicious anticipation for a basketball meeting against good friends. Kareem almost went to UCLA. He felt a rapport with Bruin Coach Steve Lavin. He became buddies with UCLA junior Jason Kapono.

But Kareem also feels some deep sadness and a little regret. His big brother, JaRon, could have been a UCLA senior. “Me and JaRon, we used to talk about playing against each other in the NCAA tournament,” Kareem said Monday afternoon. The words came hard, partly because of his injured lip and partly because it hurts a little to speak about JaRon.

“I think it would have been cool to play JaRon and I think he wishes he was still at UCLA,” Kareem said. “We talked yesterday. He was all bragging about how UCLA will take us, but I could tell he wishes things were different.”

The story of JaRon and Kareem, the talented brothers from Kansas City, is well-known to Los Angeles basketball fans. JaRon was the massively admired, ardently recruited star who verbally committed to Kansas, then changed his mind and came to UCLA.

Two years of ugly controversy followed. Both JaRon and Kareem were caught up in a Kansas City scandal involving their AAU coach, Myron Piggie, who last May went to prison on a felony count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and a misdemeanor count of failure to file income taxes.

JaRon, after sitting out part of his freshman year because of injuries, spent much of his sophomore year at UCLA under NCAA suspension and finally, having given up on class and fallen terribly out of shape, JaRon hired an agent and declared he wanted to play in the NBA.

Kareem too served an NCAA suspension, but it was shorter and only served to convince Kareem that his college career and his basketball were too important to lose. Kareem had almost come to UCLA.

“But I was more a small-town boy,” Kareem says. “Los Angeles, it scared me a little, the fast pace and the temptations. And when Coach Q [Quin Snyder] got the Missouri job and we met, we clicked. I was tempted to play with JaRon but ultimately I felt better at Missouri.”

JaRon went undrafted by the NBA. He became a basketball vagabond, bouncing between minor pro leagues and stints in alcohol rehab. Now, Glenda says, JaRon isn’t playing basketball at all, isn’t working, is living at home with her and searching for something.

“He’s a little lost,” Glenda says. “Truth be told, I think JaRon would love to be at UCLA right now. Truth be told, JaRon can hardly watch college basketball on television. It hurts him.

“He’s proud of Kareem, but he has those thoughts. JaRon was always the best, better than Kareem in high school and I know it makes him sad when he sees what he could be doing this weekend.”

JaRon wasn’t available to talk, Glenda says. “He’s out for the night, I guess. He always comes home in the morning, though.”

Kareem says he thinks JaRon might come to San Jose on Thursday. Glenda says no.

“I don’t think he could stand it,” she says.

Kareem would like for his big brother to watch him play. Kareem would love for JaRon to celebrate with Kareem, for this has not been an easy season for Kareem.

This basketball year was expected to be a breakout for both Kareem and Missouri. A year ago, Kareem played the best game of his career, of his life, against Duke in the NCAA tournament. Even though his hand was partly covered in a splint because of a broken bone, Kareem was dazzling. He scored 29 points. He made five of eight three-pointers. He kept Missouri in the game longer than it should have been and afterward all the Duke players were saying things like Kareem was already good enough to be starting in the NBA.

So Kareem was supposed to play that way every game this year. And Missouri, which was ranked as high as No. 2 this season, was supposed to ride Kareem to at least the Final Four.

“Because of that Duke game,” said Snyder, who himself played at Duke, “Kareem was the target of everybody’s defense this year. Kareem had to learn how to persevere through that and through some criticism. He’s learned how hard work can prepare and improve his mental toughness and when his mental toughness increased, Kareem found joy in the game again.”

Kareem heard himself ripped on the radio and whispered about around the Big 12. He heard people say the worst thing: “Kareem’s no different than his brother. He’s not going to make it.”

“That hurt,” Kareem says, “but just because JaRon has made mistakes, it doesn’t mean I

will.”

And, as Snyder says, Kareem was the No. 2 scorer in the Big 12, which still has four teams alive in the Sweet 16. He does average 20 points a game and 5.2 rebounds and he does have 83 assists. He did make two free throws after suffering the mashed lip and did play two days later even though Glenda couldn’t watch the game. “I was so afraid,” she said, “that Kareem was going to take another elbow to the mouth. And then what?”

And then what? “Oh, I’d play,” Kareem says. “Nothing’s keeping me off the floor now. But I kind of wish JaRon was going to be on the floor Thursday too. That would be something to see.”

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.