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Missouri basketball coach Frank Haith continued rounding out his coaching staff on Wednesday when he announced the hiring of Rick Carter, an assistant at Western Michigan.
Carter has a strong pedigree, as he learned the business in his first job as an assistant working for Tom Izzo at Michigan State from 2002-2006. He also has a background as an AAU coach in Michigan, which helped Western Michigan lure former Michigan Mr. Basketball David Kool to their campus in 2010.
Assistant coaches in basketball have two main jobs -- helping with the X's and O's in season and with recruiting year-round. For a school like Missouri, which doesn't tend to produce a lot of high-level basketball recruits, it's vitally important for its assistants to have recruiting ties around the country.
For Carter, the Tigers job is a chance to ascend to the next rung of the coaching ladder, as a successful stint in Columbia could help him to earn a head coaching job of his own down the road.
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