Tempest At Mizzou

Stewart, 54, was playing a game of spades on one of the team's two chartered planes—"Getting beat, as usual," assistant coach Rich Daly says—when he suddenly looked up and said, "I don't feel good. Do I look bad?"

Daly remembers Stewart looking white before passing out. Both planes made emergency landings in Oklahoma City—the team trainer was on the other one—and Stewart was rushed by ambulance to Hillcrest Health Center. He was treated for internal bleeding and diagnosed as having several ulcers, including one in the esophagus. The next day a private jet returned him to Missouri, and he was admitted to Columbia Regional Hospital, where his wife, Virginia, was recuperating from surgery she had undergone eight days earlier.

The day before Stewart's collapse, his other assistant, Bob Sundvold, had been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation into alleged NCAA violations, and the Tigers faced the Sooners with Daly and two graduate assistants, one a part-timer, in charge. Stewart spoke by phone with each player from his hospital bed that afternoon, and Missouri, seemingly inspired, jumped to an 18-5 lead. Even though the Tigers had been called for more fouls at that point than Oklahoma, Sooners coach Billy Tubbs vented his displeasure at the officiating and picked up a technical foul.

Soon after, the crowd began raining debris—mostly toy megaphones that had been handed out to the first five thousand fans—onto the floor, whereupon the officials asked Tubbs to help restore order. As he took the microphone, the second-largest basketball crowd ever to gather in Norman (11,734) quieted to a hush. "The referees," said Tubbs, "have asked that, regardless of how terrible the officiating is, please...."

The bedlam began before Tubbs could finish his sentence. A second T, miraculously without an ejection, followed. Would Tubbs have dared pull such a stunt with Stewart on the opposing bench? "Norm would have demanded equal time," Daly says. (The first time he ever faced Larry Brown, Stewart watched the young Kansas coach pick up two technicals, then screamed at him, "Sit down! You haven't been in the league long enough!" Not wanting to be outdone, Stewart picked up two T's of his own.) If Stewart hadn't been laid up, it might have been Open-Mike Nite at the Lloyd Noble Center.

Given the crowd's frenzied disposition, Tubbs's little speech was tantamount to incitement to riot—and it was appallingly effective. Seven of the next eight foul calls went against Missouri, and the Sooners outscored the Tigers 18-6 to make a new game of it. And what a game it was: a medley of individual moves, of Sooners and Tigers taking turns doing chin-ups on the rim, that would have tested the stoutest of stomachs. So furious was the first half, which ended tied at 53, that Daly sneaked outside during the intermission to gulp some fresh air. Only when Oklahoma senior center Stacey King outdueled Mizzou freshman Anthony Peeler over the final minutes was the Sooners' 112-105 victory assured.

Stewart's recent behavior calls to mind another tightly-wound Midwestern college basketball coach who has outstripped all institutional controls. Indeed, Stewart's admiration for Indiana's Bob Knight is legendary. In 1983, when he agreed to speak at Stewart's coaching clinic, Knight said that he had a commitment on the East Coast the next day. So Stewart arranged for Sundvold to drive Knight to the Columbia airport in the morning. But Sundvold overslept, leaving Stewart to dash out in pajamas and bathrobe, to give Knight a lift.

A few days later Knight phoned Stewart. He had missed his connecting flight, Knight said, and had had to charter a Learjet. He would send Stewart the bill. Knight did send an invoice, and Stewart paid up with what must have been the entire profits from the clinic. When he received Stewart's check, Knight came clean that there was no missed flight or Learjet. He returned the check, but Stewart loves to recount how Knight bamboozled him.

Stewart and Knight share more than the same vaporizing glare, faith in man-to-man defense and insistence on taking the good shot. (Stewart's 1979-80 Tigers hold the NCAA single-season field-goal-percentage mark of .572.) And neither has much use for sportswriters.

In recent years, Stewart's distaste for the press has blossomed into open contempt. Not only is he flanked by big-city dailies in Kansas City and St. Louis, but also his every move is studied by several hundred aggressive scribes-in-training at Missouri's fine School of Journalism. Add the simple fact that Stewart's coaching accomplishments haven't been widely trumpeted, and it's no surprise that he has a bunker mentality when it comes to dealing with the press.