College Basketball : Missouri Star Can Be a Little Mis-Chievous

Derrick Chievous, Missouri’s All-American forward, has long faced what would be a dilemma. He aspires to be a radio-television reporter, but he often refuses to give interviews.

This season, he has been in particular demand, in part because he has struggled. Missouri Coach Norm Stewart has even benched him occasionally, holding him out of one game and not starting him in four others.

Lately, Chievous has played his best of the season. In the last six games, he has averaged 28.3 points, scoring 26 in a 81-79 upset of Nevada Las Vegas Saturday.

Before the Las Vegas game, Chievous--who often tends toward outrageousness--was in a mood to talk. The two main topics: How much he sometimes dislikes talking to reporters and the segment he does on Stewart’s coach’s show.

“A person can only go so far,” he says, in discussing questioning techniques. “On my show, I usually try to get on the players and ask them, ‘Hey, I know you have a lot of girls out there.’ But if I see I’m starting to irritate someone, then I back off. (Reporters) didn’t do that. They had to have their answers.”

To explain how he feels reporters question him, Chievous uses a mock announcer’s voice.

“Why aren’t you playing the way you’re capable of playing? Do you think you’re in a slump? Do you think you’re playing with any intensity? Do you feel like you’re playing hard? They keep probing, keep pursuing, nagging, itching and irritating.”

As for his own performance on the segment that Stewart allows him to do on the show, Chievous says, “I’m like Al McGuire--no, Roy Firestone.”

Is he really any good?

“He’s improving,” Stewart said, after a long pause, when asked about the segment’s quality.

Said Chievous: “I boost the ratings unbelievably.”

Said Stewart: “I’ve made him a star in basketball, and now I’m making him a star in TV.”

The relationship between Stewart and Chievous has been tense at times this season, according to some close to the team.

For Chievous, there have been a lot of tense situations in response to his difficulties. One came to light when an anonymous caller woke him in the middle of the night to ask him if he were on drugs. Chievous angrily answered such accusations, telling the Associated Press: “I could pass as many drug tests as they wanted to give, all day, with flying colors. They wouldn’t find anything in this body. I guess when you don’t perform the way you are supposed to, they think you’re doing drugs.”

As for the relationship with Stewart, Chievous says publicly he didn’t get upset when he was benched. Stewart says that doesn’t concern him.

“I’m not in charge of happiness,” he said. “I was trying to say to him, ‘Derrick, you don’t have to do it all.’ ”

When Pittsburgh Coach Paul Evans and Villanova Coach Rollie Massimino less-than-politely declined to shake hands Saturday after Pitt’s 87-75 win at Villanova, it was just the latest incident in what has become an intense feud.

Accounts differ as to who wouldn’t shake whose hand.

“I don’t air my venom,” Massimino told the Pittsburgh Press. “I tried to shake Mr. Evans’ hand last time, but he went the other way. I went to shake his hand. He dropped it and called me a very serious and dirty name. Luckily, at my age, I walked away.”

Evans told the Press: “I know Rollie and I have our differences, and they need to be rectified. The situation is not really good between Rollie and I.”

Said Jerome Lane, a Pitt player who said he didn’t see the incident: “I’m trying to get off the court. There’s controversy between those two before it even starts.”

Some of the tension between the two is believed to stem from recruiting tangles between the schools, some that go back before Evans, who is in his second season, became the coach.

Mike Krzyzewski, Duke coach, is a devotee of man-to-man defense. But against Georgia Tech recently, Duke went to a 2-3 zone in the second half and came away with a victory.

“Yeah, we went to a matchup whatever,” Krzyzewski told The Charlotte Observer after the game.

A whatever?

“If I use the word, my mother washes my mouth out with soap,” Krzyzewski said.

Add Duke: Billy King, one of college basketball’s best defensive players, held Notre Dame’s David Rivers to nine points when the teams played recently.

Though Rivers will almost certainly be a first-round draft choice next season, King’s career likely will end with Duke’s season. Asked where he would be when Rivers is playing in the National Basketball Assn., King said, “Working 9 to 5, but I’ll have a tape of this game to show to my grandkids. There’s no other way they’ll believe it.”