The story of how the North Idaho College men’s basketball team was able to hire two former Cardinal guards who went on to play at four-year schools — Michael Hale III and America ‘Ameer’ Shamsud-din — as 26-year-old first-year assistant coaches started in July.

Nearly seven months later, the pair have helped Cardinals coach Corey Symons and his team jump out to a 22-0 record and a No. 4 ranking by the NJCAA.

“The nice thing is Mike and Ameer are both former players,” Symons said. “I’ve known them for a while, I was on the coaching staff when they played here, I recruited them. I helped bring Michael from near Seattle (Federal Way, Wash.) here. One of his high school’s assistant coaches, Kenyatta Reese, went to college with me. Mike was a great player, he was the only two-time (NJCAA) All-American at our school. He’s one of the best players to ever come through here, so when I needed an assistant coach, he had just got done playing, the overseas professional thing didn’t quite work out, so I just called him up and said ‘Hey, you wanna get into coaching?’ He came over and went on a recruiting trip to Las Vegas to hit it off with us. He met with the coaching staff, he just kind of fit right in with our staff, we went ahead with the hire and it’s been great ever since.”

How Shamsud-din — he’s known as “coach Sham” with the players — was a bit rougher at first. But right now, he’s doing pretty well so far.

“Coach Ameer and coach Mike played together here at NIC,” Symons said. “So when Ameer saw Mike up here, he called us up trying to get in. We told him we’d love to get him out here. The problem was we didn’t have any money (to pay Shamsud-din a stipend like Hale has) waiting for him. So he really wanted to get into coaching, so he came up here with no job, no money, moved into my basement, lives in my basement, went out and got a job in town. He works at a marketing firm where he can pay his bills, just because he wants to get into coaching at NIC.”

SHAMSUD-DIN may not necessarily be in coaching for too long, as he said he wants to play at a league in Australia that begins in March. Plus he has a backup plan.

“If the thing in Australia doesn’t work out, I’ll be back in Mexico,” Shamsud-din said. “I played in the CIBACOPA league there. It’s a second division league.”

In 2014, Shamsud-din was invited to try out with the NBA Developmental League’s Bakersfield Jam, an affiliate of the Phoenix Suns. But he did not make it onto the regular season roster.

“They wanted players with more experience,” Shamsud-din said. “It was between me and two other guards. I played in the preseason.”

The combo guard, who played his high school ball at Benson High in Portland, then he played two seasons at NIC, where with Hale III the 6-foot-2 Shamsud-din helped it become the top-ranked team in the nation. In the 2009-10 season, his lone season at NIC, he averaged six points per game.

And he does see some similarities between this season’s team and the team he played on a few years ago.

“We had a good team where everyone has a motor and it’s all about winning,” Shamsud-din said. “Coaching now is great, we’re fresh off our playing careers. It’s our job to mature their game on and off the court, prepare them for the next level.”

Shamsud-din went from NIC, where he graduated with his associate’s degree and played with the Academy of Art in downtown San Francisco, a Division II team in the PacWest League. He became the Urban Knights’ all-time leading scorer at 16.5 points per game. As as senior, the school also known as ART U finished 9-16, but it lost a tiebreaker that would have put it into the PacWest tournament. Before playing at NIC, he transferred from Cal-State Fullerton in part due to issues with his playing time.

And by the way, Shamsud-din admitted that back in 2008, his Benson Techmen lost to Hale’s Federal Way Eagles.

HALE MAY not have had the professional career Shamsud-din had and may still have. But the former point guard who wore some sweet dreadlocks back in his days at NIC sounded like coaching could be more of a long-term possibility for him. He said he’s still right around his old playing size at NIC, coming in at a lithe 5-foot-9, 150 pounds.

Symons is more than pleased with both coaches.

“The nice thing is Mike has taken guys like our point guards, Lucas Antunez and Sam Dowd, and helped them become coaches on the floor. Ameer is outgoing, he’s in there in the huddle.”

Hale said he could not quite find a spot on an overseas basketball team, but tried to stick on a roster in Frankfurt, Germany, and a team that traveled around the Middle East.

“It’s more or less who you know than what your skill set is,” Hale said. “I wasn’t down to go in the Middle East.”

Hale III was born in Seattle and raised in Federal Way, Wash., where at Federal Way High he led the Eagles to their first state 4A state championship in 2009. In the 2010-11 season, he led the Cardinals in scoring with 17.9 points per game while playing for former NIC and current College of Southern Idaho coach Jared Phay, as they won the Scenic West Athletic Conference and reached the Region 18 semifinals.

“It was fun,” Hale said. “It was all about discipline. Some of our opponents underestimated me. I tried to let my game do the talking.”

As a coach, Hale has had to work on some other skills.

“I can get results by studying our opponents’ tendencies,” Hale said. “I want to stay around the game of basketball any way I can.

This season as coaches, Shamsud-din and Hale get the same personalities as players.

“Ameer is more loud, he lets players know what he thinks of their play,” Hale said. “I’d like to eventually become a head coach, but right now I’m just learning.”

After playing two seasons at NIC, Hale III also had another stellar two years after transferring to the University of Texas at San Antonio.

His junior year he led the team with 99 assists and he averaged 10 points per game, helping the Roadrunners finish 18-14 (10-6 Conference USA). The next season, UTSA was 10-22, but Hale was second on the team in scoring with 15.6 points per game and he led the team with 115 assists (3.8 per game) and 59 3-pointers made.

ONE INDICATOR can be how players talk about their assistant coaches. Trey Burch-Manning, a freshman guard who is from — you guessed it — Federal Way — wraps it up.

“Both like to talk trash, they’re like hype men,” Burch-Manning said. “They’re fresh off playing, they know what we’re seeing. Both of them have played at a high level, they helped us through our experiences on and off the court. They tell us you can’t slack for one second.”

Imparting their wisdom from what they’ve learned has helped these current Cardinals.

Bruce Bourquin is a sports writer at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2013, via e-mail at bbourquin@cdapress.com or via Twitter @bourq25