Mizzou Legend Norm Stewart Motivates Basketball Team with Powerful Speech

College Basketball Hall-of-Famer Norm Stewart spoke to the Missouri Tigers men's basketball team during Thursday's practice.

Mizzou Legend Norm Stewart / Obtained from Mizzou Basketball's X/Twitter

The Missouri men's basketball team had a very special visit from Tigers legendary head coach Norm Stewart during Thursday's practice.

Stewart attended Missouri in the 1950s and was a standout baseball and basketball player for the Tigers. was a two-time team captain, and all-Big Seven selection in basketball. His 24.1 points per game in 1956 still ranks fourth in school history.

Stewart became Mizzou's head basketball coach in 1967 and held that job through the 1998-99 season. In that span, he logged a 634-333 record as an eight-time regular season conference champion, a six-time conference tournament champion, a six-time Big 8 Coach of the Year, the AP Coach of the Year in 1993-94 and led his team to 15 NCAA Tournament appearances. Stewart was inducted into the MU Athletics Hall of Fame in 1990, the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007 and the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame in 2014.

Stewart's decades of success and accolades helped him give a powerful speech to the current Mizzou basketball team on Thursday. Here's the full transcript of what he said:

"I'm not going to waste a lot of your time. I want you to know three things. First thing, you got to want it. It's got to be 'I want it!' Now you got to know how. These (coaches) who teach you how. Now it shifts back to you. The third part is you got to do it. So when you come out here and the other guys got the other uniforms on, they don't matter. It's you and your team."

"Now you ought to look around. This is what's amazing about it. I'm 89-years-old. I got to coach, I got to play a hell of a game. And you know what? You never forget it. You never forget your teammates. That's all I got for 89 years now."

"I could've played for (head coach Dennis Gates). I wanted to be yelled at because I wanted to get better. I want to leave you with this. You come out here and compete. It's competition."

The Missouri men's basketball team is aiming for a significantly better season in 2024-25, as they finished this past one with an 8-24 record, including a winless 0-18 stretch against SEC opponents. The Tigers were also first-round exits in the SEC Tournament against Georgia.

Nevertheless, this didn't deter potential new Tigers as Mizzou is welcoming one of the best newcomer classes in the country for the 2024-25 season. When Missouri announced the 2024-25 SEC game sites on May 13, it also included that the Tigers owned the No. 5 freshman class in the nation, while adding the current No. 12 transfer class under third-year head coach Dennis Gates.