Product Code Database
Norman Eugene Stewart (born January 20, 1935) is a retired American college basketball coach. He coached at the University of Northern Iowa (then known as State College of Iowa) from 1961 to 1967, but is best known for his career with the University of Missouri from 1967 until 1999. He retired with an overall coaching record of 731–375 in 38 seasons. The court at Mizzou Arena (and previously at the Hearnes Center) is named in his honor.
On March 10, 1967, Stewart was named head basketball coach at his alma mater. He inherited a program that had only garnered two winning seasons since 1956, his senior year. The Tigers had only finished as high as fourth in the Big Six/Seven/Eight three times since then. He didn't take long to turn the program around. In his fifth year, he led the Tigers to the National Invitation Tournament, their first postseason appearance of any sort since the 1944 NCAA basketball tournament, and only the second in school history. Four years later, the Tigers won their second outright conference title in school history and went to the NCAA tournament for only the second time ever, advancing all the way to the Elite Eight. He reached his peak from 1979 to 1983, when the Tigers won four straight Big Eight regular season titles.
In 32 seasons as Missouri head coach, Stewart had a 634–333 overall record, making him far and away the winningest coach in school history. Stewart's Missouri teams also won eight Big Eight regular-season championships, six Big Eight tournament titles, made 16 NCAA Tournament appearances (including Elite Eight appearances in 1976 and 1994; though the 1994 run was vacated), five NIT appearances, and one National Commissioners Invitational Tournament appearance. Stewart also was UPI Coach of the Year (1982) and Associated Press Coach of the Year (1994).
Shortly after the 1994 Elite Eight season, Missouri discovered that senior center Jevon Crudup had accepted thousands of dollars in inducements from a middleman working for agents hoping to sign Crudup if he was selected in the 1994 NBA draft. Missouri didn't dispute that Crudup had received the payments, but contended that it didn't know about them. In 1996, the NCAA largely exonerated Stewart and the Tigers, but forced them to vacate their 1994 NCAA Tournament appearance.
The 1990s were a time of both highs and lows for Mizzou basketball, with the highlight being 1994 when the Tigers went a perfect 14–0 in conference play. For that special season, Norm Stewart was named College Coach of the Year by the Associated Press and five other leading organizations. Following another winning 1998–99 season, the Stewart Era came to an end as he announced his retirement on April 1, 1999. As a measure of the growth in the Tigers' stature under his watch, he won four more games in 32 years than the Tigers had previously won in their first 60 years of play. He'd also had a hand in more than half of Missouri's all-time wins as either a player, assistant coach, or head coach.
Although retired from coaching, Stewart continued to keep a busy itinerary of meetings, speaking engagements, travel, and color commentary on Mizzou basketball broadcasts. Stewart is also a member of the council of Coaches Vs. Cancer, a program he founded following his own cancer battle. After collapsing at a Dallas, Texas restaurant in May 2007, Stewart had a pacemaker installed. In late July 2008 Stewart underwent successful open-heart surgery, an aortic valve replacement, at a Columbia, Missouri hospital.
| St. Louis | 2.0 |
|
|
