It's Been 20 Years Since the UW Offered the Job to Quin Snyder

On Sunday, the former Mercer Island point guard stepped down as coach of the Utah Jazz.

Once the news reached Seattle on Sunday that Quin Snyder had resigned from the Utah Jazz, the immediate thought by many throughout our basketball-deprived Northwest outpost was this:

Could he someday return to his hometown and become the University of Washington coach?

Twenty years ago, Snyder was offered the job to replace the fired Bob Bender, met with the school and turned it down. 

He was the No. 1 choice for the Huskies, the former Mercer Island High School point guard who had gone on to play for Duke and coach at Missouri, and someone young and dashing and capable of making a big splash.

Mike Hopkins, of course, runs the UW basketball program now, but he continues to be one of those coaches nationwide considered on a perpetual hot seat as the Huskies forever seem stuck in a malaise.

Entering his sixth season, Hopkins comes off a 17-15 showing, has lost three of his top four players to graduation or transfer and has no one talking about Husky basketball right now.

The personable yet marginally successful coach remains on a short leash, though he did bring home four locally produced players in Terrell Brown Jr., Emmitt Matthews Jr., Daejon Davis and PJ Fuller as transfers to build last season's team around and endear himself to the fan base.

Quin Snyder just completed eight seasons as coach of the Utah Jazz.  / USA TODAY Sports

In 2002, Snyder listened to a determined hiring pitch from then-UW athletic director Barbara Hedges and ultimately turned down the chance to come back to Seattle for the following reasons:

1) He felt loyal to Missouri, which would eventually force him to resign in 2006:

2) He felt loyal to Bender, who had been a Duke assistant coach and his mentor, and replacing him didn't seem right;

3) The UW wasn't offering nearly enough money to get the deal done — Bender's final salary of $375,000 was nearly a third of what Snyder was making at Missouri.

At the 2007 Final Four in Atlanta, Snyder was out of work yet mixing with the college coaching fraternity when he gave some serious thought to what might have been had he come to Montlake.

For sure, he would have had a chance to see what he could have done with talented local players such as Brandon Roy, Nate Robinson, Will Conroy and Tre Simmons, who collectively were responsible for a pair of NCAA tournament Sweet 16 appearances under Romar.

"Had I taken the Washington job, who knows?" he mused 15 years ago. "At Washington, I knew how many great players were there. What about coming home? I think I'd still be in coaching."

Snyder, 55, now steps down from the Jazz after eight productive seasons, six of which ended up in the playoffs. He restored his reputation as a successful and popular basketball leader once more and no doubt is hardly finished with coaching.

The likelihood of Snyder moving from the NBA to the college game again might seem long odds, considering he would would have to enter the NCAA recruiting wars that tend to tilt to the elite and take a lot of time and effort. 

Coaches prefer to flee that tiresome aspect of the game when they enter the pros, not backtrack to it. 

However, the prospect of injecting life into a stagnant UW basketball program that forever has been given minimum resources by the school might intrigue Snyder once and for all should that opportunity ever arise again.

Quin Snyder was offered the UW job in 2002 :: Jeffrey Swinger/USA TODAY Sports

Snyder actually turned the Huskies down twice, passing on a scholarship offer from Marv Harshman in 1985, plus others from Arizona, Kansas, Stanford and Virginia, to join Mike Krzyzewski and the Blue Devils. He appeared in three Final Fours while at Duke. 

He played in Seattle with Duke twice in 1989, beating Washington 87-61 at midseason at Alaska Airlines Arena and losing to Seton Hall 95-78 in the Final Four at the Kingdome. He coached in the city in 2004, bringing Missouri to the then-KeyArena to face Gonzaga and lost 87-80 in overtime.

Snyder has confided privately through the years that the UW might be one job he would consider some day. He still might be intrigued by the prospect of coming full circle in basketball with his hometown.

"I felt like it was good to talk and I was really impressed with [Hedges]," he said in 2004. "I have all kinds of great feelings and memories about the University of Washington. My brothers went there, my mom and dad went there, and most of my good friends went there."

Then again, another Seattle NBA franchise, which seems more viable all the time as expansion talk steadily increases, might have a better shot at employing Quin Snyder in the city.

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