Quiet. So quiet he’s almost hard to talk to. That’s what Hakim Warrick’s mother says. She’ll call her son at college and beg him to talk. Five minutes later, he’s run out of words.

Shy. Shyest kid in the world, says his high school coach. He’d get a bad call, and the whole gym would start screaming. Except Warrick, who’d hand the ball to the referee and walk down court.

Low key. He won’t leave his room unless you beg him to, says a Syracuse teammate. He’d rather spend a night at home with a few friends and his PlayStation than at a party with a few hundred admirers.

Quiet. Shy. Low key. Take your pick. But Warrick — a forward for the No. 24 Orangemen — dislikes them all.

‘I’d go with sneaky,’ Warrick says. ‘I might be quiet, but I can come up on people. I can surprise you or shake things up just when you aren’t expecting it.’

Big East coaches and players are starting to take to Warrick’s adjective. Through 15 games, the 6-foot-10 sophomore ranks in the conference’s top 15 in points (16.8), rebounds (9.2), field-goal percentage (.575), steals (1.8) and blocks (1.3). Behind freshman Carmelo Anthony, he’s the Orangemen’s second-leading scorer and rebounder.

Typical of his entire basketball career, Warrick’s progression to college stardom has occurred under the radar and without much fanfare. Sneaky almost.

‘Right now, Warrick’s probably the most improved player in the conference,’ says Greg Gary, an assistant coach at Miami. ‘He’s not really known as a superstar, so a lot of people kind of fall asleep on him. You never think he’s going to be the one to hurt you. But he always is.’

He hurt Miami on Sunday with a game-high 18 points, including a fatal put-back dunk with five minutes left that gave Syracuse the lead for good. He buried Seton Hall on Wednesday with a team-high 22 points and 10 boards. He dropped 20 on Missouri and 24 on Boston College earlier this month.

‘He’s played his best in big games,’ says teammate and roommate Josh Pace. ‘He’s stepped up pretty much every time this year. He’s turning into a giant killer.’

Funny. Last year, Warrick got killed by the giants.

Long and athletic, Warrick started his college career with swooping dunks against the likes of Binghamton, Colgate and Cornell. He’d use his reach to grab rebounds over shorter players and use his hops to jump over opponents for improbable jams.

In just the seventh game of his college career, he scored 22 points and grabbed 11 boards in 22 minutes against Cornell. He dunked seven times, often bringing the Carrier Dome crowd to its feet.

‘We knew right away he was super-athletic,’ teammate Kueth Duany said. ‘He could do things that nobody else on the team could do. You could tell he had the potential to be unbelievable.’

Intolerable. That’s how SU head coach Jim Boeheim described Warrick’s play in SU’s Big East opener last year against Rutgers. Then-Scarlet Knights forward Rashod Kent had 100 pounds on Warrick — and he used all of it. In the first half, Kent bumped and bruised Warrick under the basket. The abuse lasted three minutes. Then Boeheim sat Warrick for the rest of the game.

With the onset of the Big East season, Warrick lost minutes and, he thought, his coach’s respect. In practices, he felt picked on more than any other teammate. In games, he never knew if he’d play 15 minutes or not at all.

At season’s end, he averaged six points and five rebounds in 17 minutes.

‘If you look at his numbers, they were pretty good,’ says Queen Warrick, Hakim’s mother. ‘But he was miserable for a little while there. He thought Coach Boeheim was picking on him. He thought he was in the doghouse.

‘For a while, he mentioned transferring. But that was never really serious. He always knew he’d do what he always does: be quiet and stick it out.’

Or, in Warrick’s words: be sneaky and stick it to ’em. That’s the path he’d taken when recruiters showed little or no interest in Warrick when he was a lanky junior at Friends Central outside Philadelphia.

Despite averaging 15 points and 14 rebounds, Warrick remained relatively unknown in recruiting circles. That is until a last-minute fluke connection landed him at the Nike Camp, a recruiting extravaganza packed with prep stars and high-profile coaches. There, Warrick flashed enough of his jump-out-of-the-gym athleticism to garner interest from Syracuse and Villanova.

When another potential Syracuse recruit, Julius Hodge, decided on North Carolina State, the Orangemen offered their fifth and final scholarship to Warrick. Having fallen in love with the school on a recruiting visit, Warrick accepted.

‘He came out of nowhere to get those offers to two top schools,’ says Keino Terrell, Warrick’s high school coach. ‘He got that opportunity at the Nike Camp and just decided, ‘These guys might not know me, but they will soon.’ ‘

‘I just kind of came up on people,’ Warrick said. ‘All of a sudden people recognized I could play. It’s kind of similar to what’s happening this year. I’ve just kind of snuck up onto the scene.’

And true to form, he’s done so quietly. He’s often hid behind his best friend Anthony, the No. 1-ranked freshman in the country and a likely lottery pick if he chooses to declare for next year’s NBA Draft.

Opponents key on stopping Anthony; Warrick sneaks in for easy baskets. Anthony gets articles in Sports Illustrated and halftime features on CBS; Warrick gets to sit by his locker unbothered. Anthony’s boisterous; Warrick’s shy.

‘It’s definitely helping Warrick that Anthony soaks up all the attention,’ says Gary, the Miami assistant. ‘We spent all week watching film of Anthony, breaking him down. It makes you kind of forget about the other guys.’

Which is fine by Warrick. It’ll give him the chance to surprise opponents and keep using his favorite adjective: sneaky.

Published on January 27, 2003 at 12:00 pm