It was comical when Stewart hadhad enough (article attached)

Posted on: January 20, 2017 at 13:01:51 CT

MIZZOU'S STEWART HATES THE SOUND OF SILENCE
Author: By Vahe Gregorian Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Edition: FIVE STAR Section: SPORTS
Page: 3F
Dateline: COLUMBIA, MO. Index Terms:
MIZZOU COLLEGIATE GAME
TEAM PLAYER
Estimated printed pages: 4
Article Text:
Excitable University of Missouri basketball coach Norm Stewmt has baited officials, tlu·eatened to strm1gle mascots, bellowed at rival coaches, glowered at his own players and trash-talked opposing players.
But rarel y in his illustrious career has he ranted at his own fans.
With Mizzou romping past Iowa State in its most recent game at the Hearnes Center on Jan. 19, Stewart turned from the game and prowled his sideline trying to agitate the tame crowd.
"Don't anybody yell - there's a meeting at the library," he hollered, among more l ivel y suggestions.
Asked after the game about the crowd's brief surge after a dunk, Stewmt said, "They put thei r hymnals d own for about two minutes."
In retrospect, Stewart said his histrionics had less to do wi th the sounds of silence than wi th crowd behavior earlier this season.
"If you're going to boo, then when somebody's up 29 over a conference opponent, then it's! worthy of a few cheers," said Stewart, who received a megaphone and a pompon for his 59th bi rthday last week.
Pass The Grey Poupon: For Hearnes' harsh reputation - it is ranked by the Baltimore Sun among its "Top Ten
Pits of Pain" in college basketball - and for all MU's success there - the Tigers a re 275-43 at Hearnes since i t opened in 1 972 - its crowds seldom are raucous.
In fact, with the exception of the rabid Antlers, the student jeering section, a typical Hearnes Center crowd borders on passive and formal.
"Their biggest thing is everybody watching The Antlers," Iowa State coach Johnny Or r said. That means everybody.
"I love The Antlers," Oklahoma coach Bill y Tu bbs said. "They never bother me, and I kind of think they're funny as hell, really."

One reason The Antlers are as visible and audible as they are, though, is they have little to compete with among other fans. MU's band, cheerleaders and Golden Girls, and ! mascot Truman are excellent performers and, at times, are able! to provoke reactions.
"There is no question our fans have to be led; they aren't necessarily an extemporaneous or spontaneous group,"
MU athletic director Joe Castiglione said. "That's not being negative; that's just the way it is." But MU's spirit leaders often are less infectious than they are spectacles unto themselves.
"I don't have anything against the Missouri crowd - they're fine," Orr said. "But they're not uninhibited, like some of those places."
Cradle of Basketball: Like some of those places, in fact, right next door in the Big Eight:
At Kansas' Allen Fieldhouse, the crowd noise can be so piercing that some reporters wear earplugs.
"I don't believe there's any place in the country where the fans understand better what they can do to help their team," said Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton, who previously coached at Arkansas and Kentucky. "It would be in the top five of all the (loudest) places I've taken a team.'

Consider Oklahoma State's stifling Gallagher-Iba Arena, billed "the rowdiest arena in the nation."

Nebraska ranked 23rd in the nation in attendance last season, averaging 12,997 fans a game. Orr says Kansas and Iowa State's arenas "have the most pizzazz," and the Cyclones drew nearly 12,000 to a game last week against Florida-Atlantic.
"We had a storm that night, man, I mean a storm," Orr said. "If that had happened when I was at Michigan, with
(Florida-Atlantic) in here, a raindrop or two and that crowd would would have dropped to 7,000."
The Big Eight's average attendance last season was 10,677, third-highest among the nation's conferences. And bear in mind that includes Gallagher-Iba, which only holds 6,381, and Colorado's Coors Events Center, which seldom draws more than a few thousand fans.
Show-Me: MU has played before 61 successive sellout crowds, measured by tickets sold rather than actual
attendance, and 13,349 fans ought to! generate a significant volume.
Indeed, Reames crowd! shave had their moments. After an MU-KU game in the last five years, athletic
director Joe Castiglione recalls, when many fell into their seats exhausted after the game. And a stoked audience will be on hand for Monday's game with No.3 Kansas on ESPN.
Why a kind of hush tends to fall over Reames is a matter of opinion.
"I think it's just Missouri," Stewart said. "We have great support, but it's just Missouri." Other theories range from seat allocation to acoustics to aesthetics.
Reames was designed as a multipurpose building and has a field house, offices and classrooms under its 4 112- acre top. Its design has been criticized since the day it replaced dilapidated Brewer Fieldhouse.
"There is so much wasted space, so much green and gray, so much ugliness," the Columbia Daily Tribune's Jeff Krupsaw once wrote."... Quite simply, the Reames Center is the worst place to watch college basketball in this hemisphere."
Stewart ta! kes issue with those opinions- "We're so self-critical in this state," he said- but it's apparent that the
configuration of the cavernous Heames has some impact on the noise level. Section D, where most of the student seats are, is so high and away from the floor that the action might as well be on TV.
"The depth perception is weird in there; it looks like it could seat 20 or 25,000, and it's like the stands are straight up," said Tubbs, who said that makes for difficult shooting, too. "I was shooting around the day before the first time we played there, and I couldn't get anything down. I knew if I was having trouble, anybody would."
Many, though, suggest the matter is more basic: At most arenas, energetic students have a major presence in the
lower seats. At Nebraska on Monday, for instance, students filled all but one floor section and were practicing
"Sit Down Norm" chant an hour before the game.
Mizzou allocates a Big Eight-high 48 percen! t of its seats to students, Castiglione said, but there is no ! easy way now to weave them in closer.
"If it was easy to do, we would have done it a long time ago," he said. "But it's virtually an impossible move to
make."

A few years ago, he said, MU was trying to move the band and would have had to change about 30 seats. The sightlines, he said, would have been almost exactly the same.
"They thought we were absolutely out of our minds," he said. "Even if they improved their view, they'd rather
stay with what they know because people are creatures of habit."
Those seats were there to be had for students during the 1970s. Mizzou was averaging about 6,000 fans a game mid-way through the decade. Now, Castiglione said, the only hope for changing the seating alignment would be major renovations, such as installing bleacher seats.
"If we want to make it like Brewer again," Castiglione joked, "I could bring in some dust and pigeons, too. 11
But the MU athletic department is only a tenant of Reames,! run by the university. So if Reames is going to be more vibrant, it probably will have to happen under the same format.
"This is not, and I repeat, not, that we're berating our fans, 11 Castiglione said. "They've been outstanding fans. And the excitement, pageantry and emotion at Reames is great; it's been copied by a lot of other schools.
"We just need people to cheer from wherever they sit.11
Or look out for the coach. Memo:
COLLEGE BASKETBALL
Copyright 1994 St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Record Number: 9401290476