With the 2020 NCAA tourney tipping off next month, we will spend this month taking a walk down memory lane with a choice collection of players/coaches who are celebrating an awesome anniversary this year. From some game-winning FTs in the 1955 tourney (65th anniversary) through a 17-PT comeback win in the 2015 1st 4 (5th anniversary), these legends have all carved out a little piece of history in past Marches. We continue our series with Hall of Famer Norm Stewart, who was an All-American basketball player at Missouri in 1956 and later spent more than 30 years as head coach at his alma mater until retiring in 1999. He won 8 Big 8 regular season championships, made 16 NCAA tourney appearances, and was a 2-time national COY before being inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Fritz Mitchell (who directed the SEC Storied film “Norm”) and radio announcer Gary Link (who was co-captain under Norm in 1974) about the 40th anniversary of Norm beating Notre Dame in the 1980 NCAA tourney and the 25th anniversary of being on the wrong side of 1 of the most famous plays in tourney history.
As a senior at Missouri he was named All-American after scoring 24.1 PPG: how good a player was he back in the day? FRITZ MITCHELL: I have been told that he was a very good player. He was a local boy who made good from a small town in Missouri. He was very good in baseball as well: he even pitched for a College World Series championship team! He tried to make a pro career in baseball but it did not go anywhere. He played in a dank/dark gym that no longer exists and eventually became a coach. GARY LINK: He is from a small town called Shelbyville and was a tenacious player on both ends of the floor. He was not the prettiest player in the world but he would attack the basket and willed the ball to go in.
As head coach at Missouri when his team played road games against Kansas he refused to spend a dime on food/hotels/gas because of the taxes that would support his neighbor to the West: how heated was the rivalry back in the day before the Tigers joined the SEC? FM: It has always been heated, as it goes back to the Civil War: when Missouri moved to the SEC they lost their most precious rivalry. Norm loved to bait Roy Williams and the other Jayhawk coaches he faced: there was always one-upmanship. He recruited Anthony Peeler from Kansas City: “Border War” was an understatement. It is a casualty of realignment. I think that Norm got the better of the rivalry during his playing days because Kansas was in a down period. GL: That is a little wrong: it was more that we would not spend a dime in Lawrence because the rivalry with KU was a fierce “Border War”. We would bus to Kansas City and stay there the night before, then fill up with gas and drive to Lawrence to play the game, then come right back and eat/fill up in Kansas City.
In 1978 he made the NCAA tourney despite having a 14-15 record: how was he able to win the Big 8 tourney after such a rough regular season? FM: The salient point is that as successful as he was he was never able to win the Big 1, which always haunted him. He was a great motivator so it hardly surprises me that he had a team that was on the uptick and improved so much during the course of the season. GL: He really was just a guy who focused on the next game at hand. He never focused on long-term goals: when you start a conference tourney you are 0-0 regardless of how well or poor you played in the regular season. He did not make any game too big or discount any game as too small. Everybody talks about March Madness and I hope that they never change it…but all you have to do is win 4 games in a row at the right time whether you are a #1 seed or not.
In the 1980 NCAA tourney Mark Dressler scored a career-high 32 PTS (13-16 FG) in a 3-PT OT win over Notre Dame (in only his 6th start of the season): was it just 1 of those scenarios where every shot he put up seemed to go in because he was “in the zone”? GL: That was another 1 of those games where if you look at his shot chart he did not take a lot of shots outside 5 feet. They were keying on our 2 other stars (Steve Stipanovich/Jon Sundvold) but Mark was a Coach Stewart-type of player: if he was open then his teammates were taught to give the ball up.
In the 1990 NCAA tourney Maurice Newby scored 9 PTS including a 22-footer with 2 seconds left in a 3-PT upset by #14-seed Northern Iowa: where does that rank among the most devastating losses of his career? FM: That was high on the list but there was also a 3-PT loss to Syracuse in the 1989 Sweet 16. GL: Coach never got to the Final 4 but his teams played every game as if it was the Final 4. We may have been worn down a little bit at the end after a long regular season but I guarantee you that we did not take them lightly or look past them. That is the great thing about the NCAA tourney: you have to be ready every night. If you had the exact same teams play 1 month later you could have a completely different winner.
In the 1995 NCAA tourney Tyus Edney scored 15 PTS including a coast-to-coast layup at the buzzer in a 1-PT win by eventual champion UCLA: what kind of defense did he draw up, and how was Edney able to break it? FM: They had UCLA on the ropes before they came back to win it. The reason he made the layup is because Norm told everyone not to foul so they gave him a little too much leeway. GL: We have watched it hundreds of times. We played it straight up and we probably needed to make him turn 1 more time. You do not want to foul him and the problem is that he had a head of steam and was going 100 miles/hour. I recall it being a contested layup and he made a heck of a play: that is basketball.
He was a 2-time national COY: what did it mean to him to win such outstanding honors? FM: Norm has a lot of pride in his university/state but he would always deflect those honors to the people around him. He was an incredibly humble man so the honors did not mean as much as the journey. GL: I guarantee you that he would be the 1st to give his credit to his players and that he did not coach any better that year than he had the 5 years before or after that. He was a humble guy who took care of all the nonsense off the court. He said he would take care of the fans/refs/band and just prepared us to take care of the 5 guys on the court. He did not over-coach or under-coach: he just let us play.
His 700+ career wins remain in the top-50 in NCAA history, and in 2007 he was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame: how was he able to be so successful for such a long stretch of time? FM: He used to be ranked in the top-6 or 7. He hated to lose and had a competitive streak so he would do anything within the rules to win. He was incredibly competitive and you would see the “Stormin’ Norman” during games occasionally. GL: Not only did he succeed for more than 30 years but he did it with a bunch of Missouri kids. If you were a D-1 caliber player in the state then he would try to give you an opportunity. The 1st great recruit he had was John Brown from Dixon, MO. He liked those tough blue-collar players similar to him who played the right way. Later he brought in players from outside the state like Doug Smith from Detroit and Derrick Chievous from NYC and we all played the same way. He said that if we ran the play correctly then someone would be open for a good shot. His teams played defense every single year, which was a big adjustment for some guys who had been primarily offensive stars in high school. Most of the players who left here were very good offensive players but poor defenders: very rarely did any of his transfers light it up elsewhere.
He has battled cancer/heart problems over the past few decades: what has he been up to since retiring, and how is his health doing these days? FM: He is hanging in there. He continues to bounce back and forth between Palm Springs and Columbia. He likes to attend games to see his old team. He has been cancer-free for years and is driven by this urge to help people who have battled cancer. He lost his parents to the disease and it became his passion after he retired. He might not have won an NCAA title but what he has contributed afterward is far greater. He touched a lot of young men’s lives and raised millions of dollars through Coaches vs. Cancer. He loves to meet people/tell stories and he rolls with the punches. GL: He is doing well. He has a beautiful home in California where he spends half the year but is back in Columbia during the summertime. He comes to a lot of football games in the fall and a few basketball games before heading west. He is 1 of the toughest guys I know: he looked cancer right in the eye and fought back. He wants to win whether we are playing pool/ping pong.