Snyder’s Manner Is Hard to Top

It always comes back to the hair. On the “Jim Rome Show,” on ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption,” on local television and local radio, on national television and national radio. Everybody wants to know.

How does Missouri Coach Quin Snyder get that hair? It is thick. It is smooth and wavy. It does this thing where the hair is swept back with just the right little curl. It is so Clark Gable in a 21st-century kind of way.

“I get tired of talking about the hair,” Snyder says. “Really, I don’t spend that much time on it.”

That’s the most upsetting thing. It’s natural. Hair envy is an ugly thing but anyone with bad hair understands.

And it’s not only the hair. There’s Snyder envy period, the way he’s 35 and has this great job and everybody loves him.

It’s the way Snyder can charm a room. The room can be full of adults or children, of basketball players or alumni or students. It doesn’t matter. Snyder can talk to whoever is in the room and make those people feel as if he is speaking only to them. Snyder isn’t glib, it’s not like that. He really talks to you. He says important things. “Every day, if you listen to Coach Q, you learn something,” says Travon Bryant, a Missouri sophomore from Long Beach. “You can tell he’s thought about what he’s saying.”

And it’s not only the way he can charm a room. It’s the way Snyder has learned to coach. It’s just luck, some would say. It’s just lucky that this guy with the great hair and gift of gab who can make everybody like him has fallen into this great job.

But it hasn’t been luck. Not in any way.

Was it luck that earned Snyder a basketball scholarship to Duke? Of course it was talent. While Snyder was a Duke guard, the Blue Devils went to three Final Fours. Snyder is No. 3 on the Duke career assist list.

And while Snyder was playing for Mike Krzyzewski, he also was learning from him and impressing the coach. So Snyder became an assistant coach for Krzyzewski, but not before spending a year as an assistant for Larry Brown and the Clippers. Not a bad apprenticeship. The six years Snyder spent under Krzyzewski, those were pretty productive too. He was instrumental in recruiting the Duke team that finished 37-2 in 1998-99 and he helped coach them too.

It was that record, and not the hair, it was that resume, and not the sweet talk, that earned Snyder his first head-coaching job three years ago at Missouri. It is his experience, under Brown and Krzyzewski, that has shaped Snyder as a coach. He is a stickler for details. He is proud to have introduced the computer and its abilities to help scout, recruit, teach, organize, to Duke’s program.

He is proud to have played for and coached at Duke but he is not a Krzyzewski clone and doesn’t want to be called one. He bristles when there is a hint someone considers him a work in progress.

“I know who I am,” Snyder says. “I coached last year the way I coached this year and I kind of smile when people ask if I’ve grown into the job this year. What we’ve accomplished this year isn’t about whether I’ve arrived or I haven’t arrived as a coach. [Kentucky Coach] Tubby Smith once said something that stuck with me. Tubby said that every year he hopes to grow as a coach and a person. That’s what I want to do. I want to grow every year. I want my players to grow, I want the program to grow.”

Like UCLA, Missouri was a victim of high expectations.

Based on an exciting, competitive performance against Duke in the second round of the NCAA tournament last year, and because most of the team came back, Missouri was in the top 10 of many preseason polls.

And when the Tigers started this season 9-0, they moved up to No. 2. The young coach knew better. He knew that Missouri wasn’t the second-best team in the country. “I told my players that, over and over. But you know kids. They were on magazine covers. They were everywhere. And then, when we fell to the point we weren’t even getting any votes in the poll, I told my kids we weren’t that bad either. We were better than that.”

Snyder talks about “the kids” a lot. He is not their friend but he listens. He is not their father but he is a gentle teacher, a stern taskmaster, a setter of limits, a man of high expectations. “You don’t want to let Coach Q down,” Kareem Rush says. “He lets you know he cares about you and he also lets you know he expects you to follow the rules and learn lessons all year.”

So far Snyder is three for three in taking Missouri to the NCAA tournament. In his rookie season, the Tigers lost in the first round to North Carolina. Last year, it was a win over Georgia, then the loss to Duke. This year there already have been upsets of Miami and Ohio State.

“The thing about Coach Q,” Bryant says, “is that because he was at Duke, he brought some of those expectations with him. People expect us to be Duke. We’re not. We’re still learning.

“Coach Q has been great about taking off the pressure. People said bad things about us this year when we lost but Coach Q explained that as long as we kept improving, things would be fine. He’s all about improving and doing things the right way. Coach Q might be young, but he’s tough. And that’s a good thing for a coach. We need someone to be tough.”

And about that hair? “Oh,” Bryant says, “he loves the hair. Don’t let him fool you.”

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