Stand up, Norm
Five years after resigning as coach, Stewart’s legend lives on.
By JOE WALLJASPER Tribune sports editor
Published Sunday, February 15, 2004
Kim Anderson recalls a Missouri basketball staff meeting in which Coach Norm Stewart sought suggestions for new practice drills. It was February, and Stewart liked to shorten practices and add some new things late in the season to keep workouts from getting stale.
Tribune file photo
In 2001, Norm Stewart was joined by his wife, Virginia, when the Hearnes Center court was named in his honor. Stewart returns to Hearnes on Wednesday to see his jersey lowered from the rafters be-fore it’s moved to the new arena.
Anderson suggested running a three-man weave as a way to keep things loose.
Stewart paused, cocked his head and said, "Why would you do a three-man weave? Would you do that in a game?"
With that, the three-man weave was a dead issue.
On Monday, Anderson, now the head coach at Central Missouri State, received a phone call from his mentor. Stewart wanted to know if Anderson was shortening practices and using some new drills. Anderson admitted he wasn’t.
"He told me, ‘You need to do the three-man weave,’ " Anderson said. "I told him, ‘Don’t you remember what you said when I suggested that?’ He said, ‘Well, you’ve got to do something to loosen them up.’
"So the first drill I did was the three-man weave, and my kids loved it. They’re like, ‘Oh yeah, the weave.’ I said, ‘We won’t ever do this in a game, but we’ll do it today.’ "
Stewart had - and has - a way of keeping people on their toes, often by doing the last thing anyone would expect. It’s been five years since his most notable end-around, resigning as Missouri’s basketball coach after 32 seasons in charge.
Since then, he hasn’t had much involvement with the Missouri athletic department. He was the guest of honor in 2001 when the Hearnes Center floor was dedicated to him, he has filled in for Jon Sundvold as a broadcaster for a handful of games on the Mizzou Sports Network and he has watched the occasional game from the stands.
Wednesday will be a rare appearance in the building that he turned into one of the toughest places in the nation for visiting teams to win. Stewart will be honored with a ceremony in which his retired jersey will be lowered from the rafters. Next season, it will be raised again in the new arena.
The same ceremony was held a few weeks ago with the jerseys of Bill Stauffer, Willie Smith, Steve Stipanovich, Sundvold and Doug Smith. From his second home in Palm Springs, Calif., Stewart enjoyed watching it on television. He’s unsure what emotions will be stirred when he’s the one at center court.
"I was surprised that my number was there in the first place and of course very pleased and honored," Stewart said recently in a phone interview. "A lot of my life has been spent at the university and in athletics. Now that I’m removed from it, I try to have a different perspective and keep it in relationship to everything else. When there’s that much of your life and your family’s and everyone else’s involved, well, it’s very special."
Although Stewart, who turned 69 last month, hasn’t been around the Missouri basketball program much in the last five years, his shadow hasn’t followed suit. After four straight NCAA Tournament appearances, Missouri Coach Quin Snyder is suffering through a disappointing season, and at any given hour on any given weekday, there’s a caller on a sports-talk radio show in Missouri comparing Snyder unfavorably to his predecessor.
All Stewart did was compile a 731-375 record and win eight Big Eight titles and six Big Eight Tournament titles. He was named national coach of the year in 1982 and 1994.
Good luck competing with that.
Stewart hears it, too. He is still employed by the university as a special assistant to the chancellor. While trying to encourage donations to the university, Stewart gets plenty of comments about the basketball team.
"Like a lot of people in development, you hear when they’re not doing very well," he said. "I get to hear some of that. I quickly remind them that I’m not involved in the athletic department any more and to hang in there because you win some, you lose some. But I follow along with the team. I keep up with what’s going on because that has to do with my university."
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Although it seems like Missouri has been his university forever, it was no foregone conclusion that it would turn out that way. As a senior at Shelbyville High School, he was recruited by legendary Kansas Coach Phog Allen, and the two maintained a friendly relationship - to the chagrin of fans on both sides - until Allen died.
But MU is where Stewart landed, of course. It’s where he met his wife, Virginia. It’s where he helped the 1954 baseball team to a national championship as a fireballing right-handed pitcher. And it’s where he averaged 24.1 points as a senior basketball player - hence the retired No. 22 jersey.
When pro basketball and baseball didn’t pan out, he immediately got into coaching as an assistant basketball and baseball coach at MU. He became the head coach at what is now called Northern Iowa University at age 26. He compiled a 97-42 record in six years.
Meanwhile, at Missouri, the Bob Vanatta era was staggering to its conclusion. The Tigers went a combined 6-43 in Vanatta’s last three years.
In 1967, MU Athletic Director Dan Devine was looking for a new coach - preferably a Missouri native - who would stick around for the long haul. Picking Stewart was a shrewd move. After a 10-16 rookie year, he started winning, and he was still winning when Devine came back around for his second tour of duty as athletic director in 1992.
The Tigers gained some national prominence in the early 1970s with All-American John Brown and the bruising Al Eberhard. The first Big Eight championship and the first NCAA Tournament appearance under Stewart came in the breakthrough year of 1976. With Anderson, Jim Kennedy and a scoring machine named Willie Smith, Missouri went 26-5 and advanced to the round of eight in the NCAA Tournament.
The hallmarks of Stewart’s teams were tenacious man-to-man defense and the triangle offense. But his genius as a coach was as a basketball psychologist.
He broke players down, built them back up. He scared them, infuriated them, charmed them and used his ample powers of persuasion to extract every last bit of potential from the players who were mentally tough enough to handle it. The players who understand it often left, and there were more than a few of them.
Anderson got his first taste of the unpredictable twists and turns of Stewart’s mind while still a senior at Smith-Cotton High School in Sedalia. Anderson was torn between Memphis State and Missouri as his college destination.
"The last two weeks before I was going to sign, Coach Stewart used to come down every day to the cafeteria in Sedalia and eat lunch," Anderson said. "But he wouldn’t really eat with me. It got to be, ‘Hey, Norm’s here,’ and he’d just be sitting with the students eating lunch."
Likewise, Willie Smith got just what he didn’t expect during his recruitment. When Stewart visited Smith at the national junior college tournament, Smith offered his hand. Stewart informed Smith he had no idea how to perform the then-popular soul shakes and had no interest in learning.
"We just shook hands the traditional way," Smith said. "There was a lot of stuff going on in those days that would be called cheating now. Coaches would try to learn things so they could be cool. With him, there was no façade. That’s what I wanted."
Anderson, who was the 1977 Big Eight player of the year, credits much of his development as a player to Stewart’s ability to motivate him.
"I remember one day when things weren’t going great," Anderson said. "I came to practice, and he came over and said, ‘You know what, I really enjoy having you here. It’s really nice to have you come out here every day and work hard.’ He might have yelled and screamed at me for two hours after that, but he had that knack of really making you want to play for him. Sometimes, it was because he challenged you. You might be mad, but it made you play better, it made you play harder. It was like, ‘I’m going to show Coach he’s wrong.’
"With Coach Stewart, you were expecting one thing, and something else came. You just never knew what to expect. I think that’s what made him really good."
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In the 1980s, Stewart was in his coaching prime and Missouri was the dominant program in the Big Eight. With Ricky Frazier, Stipanovich and Sundvold, the Tigers won four straight conference titles to start the decade and added another in 1987. They won three Big Eight Tournament titles in the same 10-year span.
Perhaps most impressive about those teams was their ability to win on the road. During one stretch that spanned three seasons - 1981-83 - the Tigers won 11 straight Big Eight road games.
Stewart preferred to spend as little time as possible on enemy soil. The Tigers would fly in a few hours before the game and fly out shortly afterward. Former MU sports information director Bob Brendel referred to the road trips as "commando raids." While in opposing arenas, Stewart was the coach fans loved to hate.
Tribune file photo
When Missouri Coach Norm Stewart and Oklahoma Coach Billy Tubbs got together there was usually plenty of exciting basketball — and some name-calling.
"In Norman, people liked to get after Norm more than anybody else," said former Oklahoma Coach Billy Tubbs, who is now the athletic director at Lamar. "If the team you’re playing is beating you pretty consistently, you’re always a nice guy and the fans leave you alone. If you’re beating the other team, they really don’t like your ass much."
The chant, "Sit down, Norm," was music to Stewart’s ears. It meant fans were watching him and not the game.
"He was probably a better coach on the road than he was at home," said Gary Link, who played for Stewart in the early ’70s and is in his eighth season as the radio color commentator for MU basketball games. "He used to kid us and say, ‘I’ll take care of the fans on the road. You just worry about playing.’ All those years they kept yelling, ‘Sit down, Norm. Sit down, Norm,’ that was him getting in their heads."
While Stewart was known to incite opposing fans with his sideline rants at the officials, he also knew how to win them over.
"I remember times at Oklahoma and Kansas where he came out and gave candy away to people sitting behind the bench," Brendel said. "There were times during warm-ups where he had his players throw T-shirts to the crowd. He did it at Nebraska once and Oklahoma once. It was the same thing, where they were going to present the national championship trophy in football. He did it for the last game at Ahearn Fieldhouse at Kansas State, threw shirts into the crowd that said, ‘Thanks for the memories.’
"Master psychologist, no question."
As the ’80s wore on, many of Missouri’s best players were from out of state. From New York came Derrick Chievous, who wore a Band-Aid every game for no particular reason and became the school’s all-time leading scorer.
"He had the phenomenal ability to score," Stewart said. "Now, he had some other phenomenal abilities that made it interesting to coach him."
Thanks in large part to the recruiting of assistant coach Rich Daly, MU established a pipeline to Detroit that produced Lynn Hardy, Lee Coward, John McIntyre, Nathan Buntin and - the best of the bunch - Doug Smith.
That was the height of the Big Eight’s power in basketball. In 1988, the NCAA Tournament final was between conference foes Kansas and Oklahoma. Two years later, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma traded the No. 1 national ranking like a hot potato.
Beyond just great basketball, the outsized personalities of Stewart, Tubbs and Iowa State’s Johnny Orr kept things lively. Stewart and Tubbs were friends but rarely resisted chances to jab each other.
In one memorable exchange, Stewart referred to Tubbs as a jackass.
"I said something to the extent that at least a jackass is a thoroughbred," Tubbs said. "I called him Francis the Talking Mule. Basically, a mule is a cross, not a thoroughbred. A mule is a breed between a horse and a jackass, or something like that. Anyway, we got mad at each other on the floor, no question about it.
"But the Big Eight was a little different than the Big 12. We had a few guys that would speak their minds."
For Missouri, the good times of the ’80s came with a price. In 1989, the NCAA launched an investigation of the MU basketball program. In February 1989, Stewart collapsed on the plane while traveling to a game at Oklahoma. He was diagnosed with colon cancer, and Daly finished the season as coach.
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Stewart said that while he and Virginia, who was ill at the same time, were hospitalized, they received 3,500 letters and cards from fans. He beat cancer and made the best of a bad situation by starting a new charity called Three-point Attack: Norm’s Special Challenge, which became the wildly successful Coaches vs. Cancer.
The NCAA wasn’t so easy to shake. In June of 1990, Missouri was placed on two year’s probation because the NCAA determined that Stewart was operating his program with a lack of institutional control, among other violations.
The irony was, by that point, Stewart was the institution. Athletic directors came and went every few years, but Stewart was the constant. He was so powerful that St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz sometimes referred to MU as the University of Missouri-Norm Stewart.
Stewart tended to fight battles on all fronts. A lack of diplomacy was occasionally the price paid for extreme competitiveness.
During the NCAA investigation, he openly feuded with Athletic Director Dick Tamburo - at some points the two communicated strictly by memo - as well as Chancellor Haskell Monroe.
Stewart was often prickly with the media, too, particularly with the student reporters at the Columbia Missourian. But in a way, he served as the ultimate teacher for generations of sportswriters passing through the MU School of Journalism. If you survived Norm, you could survive anyone - except maybe Bobby Knight.
Stewart’s critics often pointed out that for all his regular-season success and conference championships, his teams rarely made a splash in the NCAA Tournament. Despite Missouri’s dominance in the ’80s, it never won more than two games in any NCAA Tournament in that decade. The critics had more fuel when, in 1990, the Tigers rose to No. 1 in the nation and won the Big Eight but then lost their last regular-season game to Notre Dame, their first Big Eight Tournament game to Colorado and their first-round NCAA Tournament game to Northern Iowa.
But things picked up for Stewart when Devine, whom he liked and respected, returned as athletic director. And out of the ashes of NCAA probation came one of the best teams in school history and probably the best coaching job of Stewart’s career.
The backbone of that team was a group of eight seniors, most of whom came to Missouri the year it was banned from postseason play. In 1994, Melvin Booker blossomed into the Big Eight player of the year, Kelly Thames was the league’s freshman of the year, Jevon Crudup provided the power inside, Mark Atkins and Paul O’Liney bombed away from the outside and Lamont Frazier and Julian Winfield did all the little things.
"That ballclub had no true center, no 3 man and no point guard," Stewart said. "We convinced them that there was a time when all of them could play point, all of them could play center and all of them could be a 3 man. They bought into that."
After narrowly beating Central Missouri State 69-66 and then suffering the most lopsided defeat in school history, a 120-68 blowout at Arkansas, the Tigers went on a roll. They won the Big Eight with a 14-0 record and reeled off three wins in the NCAA Tournament.
"They got to where they knew they would win every game," Stewart said. "They almost did."
One step away from the first Final Four in school history, MU lost to Arizona. It was the last realistic chance for Stewart to make the Final Four.
Missouri was a pleasant surprise again the next year, making the NCAA Tournament despite losing Thames to a preseason knee injury. The Tigers beat Indiana in the first round and coming within 4.8 seconds of eliminating eventual champion UCLA.
But for the next three years, as Stewart said, "we kind of stumbled around a little bit." Although Missouri managed to beat Kansas at home each season, it failed to make the NCAA Tournament three years in a row. Fans grumbled that Stewart could no longer recruit or relate to the players.
"At that time, we operated with myself, two full-time assistants and one part-time assistant," Stewart said. "The part-time assistant left, and I did not replace him. The staff didn’t have enough people, and the Hearnes building was becoming crowded. We always had scheduling problems. I always talked to the Big Eight and Big 12 people, and we had the most complicated thing in order to schedule. We had situations where the inability to schedule because of the conflicts at Hearnes affected our ability to win."
After the 1998 season, he met with Chancellor Richard Wallace to discuss his future.
"I asked the chancellor what we were going to do about basketball," Stewart said. "He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘We need to change.’ He said, ‘No, you can’t change now. You haven’t won quite as many games, but you beat Illinois and beat KU.’
"I said, ‘Chancellor, you’re saying what I should be saying if I was 35 years old. I should be trying to sell myself, and you should be saying no.’ We laughed a little a bit, and then he said, ‘You’ve got to stay another year.’ I said I’d stay another year, and then we’ve got to do something. I said, ‘If I have a good year, that will be the final year.’ "
Stewart’s final season turned out well. With the help of Michigan transfer Albert White, Missouri tied for second in the Big 12, made the NCAA Tournament and finished 20-9. The highlight was a 71-63 victory over Kansas in Stewart’s final game at Allen Fieldhouse.
"One of my favorite guys was Albert White," Stewart said. "I loved Albert. You like any kid that likes to play. Now, there are other things that sometimes young men will do that you’re trying to get them to change, but he just absolutely loved to play basketball."
Stewart’s passion for the game had waned, though. He said he decided to resign while he and Virginia were flying home from the Final Four. The plane stopped over in St. Louis on the way from Tampa to California. Stewart decided to get out. He asked Anderson to pick him up at the airport. He broke the news to him on I-70. Then he returned to Columbia and made it official.
At the time, there were rumors that Stewart was forced out by new Athletic Director Mike Alden, but both men have said that was not the case.
"I thoroughly enjoyed the 43 years I got the wonderful opportunity to coach," Stewart said. "I made a decision that I thought, it’s really going to be something if I wake up in the morning and say, ‘I did what?’ But I never looked back.
"I think the timing was good. Maybe if I would have stayed I would have achieved another goal that I always wanted to achieve, but I just felt that under the circumstances, it was a good time to step aside. We had single-digit losses. We won 20 ballgames. We went to the NCAA. We had a great core of people coming back, and that’s the way I wanted to leave it."
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At the time of his resignation, Stewart had played or coached in more than 50 percent of the basketball games in school history. Since then, he’s kept his distance from the athletic department. Some of that is by his choice, some because he hasn’t been overwhelmed with offers.
"Whatever level of involvement that Coach would want to have, we would welcome any of that," Alden said. "He’s certainly a legend, not only at Mizzou but in our industry. You would always want to leave it up to him to what he would want to do."
He was honored once at the Hearnes Center with the floor dedication in 2001. That’s the same number of times the University of Kansas has honored him - he received a standing ovation at Allen Fieldhouse last year in a ceremony celebrating his contributions to Coaches vs. Cancer.
Stewart spends much of his time in Palm Springs, so it’s not geographically feasible for him to hang out at the Hearnes Center regularly. But he sounds willing to be more involved - if asked.
"When I left, and I’ve told everybody, if somebody wanted me to help them, all they had to do was call me," he said. "If I could do it, I would be happy to do it. I was asked to" broadcast "the games, and I said, ‘Sure, I’d be happy to. If you think that will help, that’s what I’ll do.’
"That’s how I’ve gone about it. I think when you make a change, people want to do it their way, and that’s fine. There’s times when you think it could have been done a different way, but that’s not my choosing."
There is a Faurot Field, a Devine Pavilion and a Simmons Field. For Stewart, who obviously belongs in the same category as those MU coaching legends, there is Norm Stewart Court at the Hearnes Center. To the disappointment of many longtime MU fans, it will stay at the Hearnes Center rather than moving to the new arena.
Bill Laurie, the donor who made the new arena possible, demanded the right to determine who would be honored in the new arena. He said having Stewart’s name on the court would be unfair to Snyder. University officials agreed to Laurie’s wishes.
"When the chancellor called me, I told him, ‘You have to do what’s in the best interest of the people in the state of Missouri and the University of Missouri,’ " Stewart said. "But I also said, right on the heels of that, ‘If you do that, here’s what’s going to occur.’ "
The obvious implication - not lost on Stewart’s fans - was that the legacy of the man who built the MU basketball program from nothing into a national power was sold for $25 million.
Alden said he didn’t know if the floor-naming issue would have been a deal-breaker for Laurie’s donation.
"To me, that’s so far down the line," Alden said. "It happened a long time ago. It was all agreed upon when we first were going for the gift. For me to speculate back on it would probably be inappropriate."
At least his retired jersey will be making the trip to the new arena, and that’s cause for celebration.
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Five years after he left the bench, Stewart said he doesn’t miss the cut-throat competition of college basketball. He said he can find competition anywhere, and those who know him agree vociferously.
"Whether you’re playing cards on the airplane or playing golf or playing pool or whatever, he competes," Anderson said. "His big thing was, he used to bet whose luggage was going to come down the carousel first at the airport. He’s just competitive. He plays to win, and I think that carries over and that rubs off on some people - not all, but some.
"Figuring out how to win, that’s what he did really well, and probably still does. I just know if you’re out there playing golf with him, he’s always thinking. Whatever it is you might be doing, he’s always trying to figure out how to win."
And he still stays involved with coaching through some of his former players and assistants. He talks to Southeast Missouri State Coach Gary Garner, Iowa State assistant Bob Sundvold, Pittsburg State assistant Jeff Hafer, Des Moines Area Community College Coach Orv Salmon, as well as Anderson and Frazier at CMSU.
Stewart listens and makes suggestions. After all, you never know when a three-man weave might come in handy.
"The first two years, I hardly ever watched a basketball game," he said. "Now, I’m watching a few games. I have some guys that are coaching that I talk to at least once a week - sometimes two or three times a week. I stay close to it."