Joseph Winston Scott is an American college basketball coach who is currently in his second stint as the head coach at Air Force. Scott previously was head coach at Air Force once before, as well as at Princeton and Denver.
Early life and education
Born on Pelican Island near Toms River, New Jersey, Scott played baseball, basketball and football at Toms River High School East, where he set the school's basketball career scoring record. Scott played at point guard in high school and set a school record for career basketball points with 1,550. As a player in the mid-1980s, Scott learned the "Princeton offense," a methodical system that seeks high-percentage shots by passing until the right opportunity rather than a fast-pace offense with more shots. As a result, Scott has frequently instituted a deliberate pace as a coach, often coaching the slowest-paced team in the country. In 1990, Scott earned his law degree at Notre Dame Law School and became a personal injury lawyer at New Jersey law firm Ribis, Graham, & Carter. In 2004, Scott reflected on his legal career: "If you are not a public defender or a prosecutor, most of the time what you are trying to do is help yourself, and when I was doing what I was doing every day, I sat there and said, ‘Who am I helping?’ It's all about billing hours."
Coaching career
After being an assistant coach at Monmouth University for the 1991–92 season, Scott returned to Princeton as an assistant coach, first under Pete Carril from 1992 to 1996 and Bill Carmody from 1996 to 2000. Scott's time as assistant coach included a 1996 win over defending champion UCLA in the NCAA Tournament and a no. 7 ranking and another second-round NCAA appearance in 1998. The 1998 team earned a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament, the highest ranking ever for an Ivy League school. From 2000 to 2004, Scott was head coach at Air Force. Scott accrued a 51–63 record. After guiding the Falcons to a 22–7 record and an NCAA Tournament berth in 2003–04, Scott was named the Mountain West ConferenceCoach of the Year and was hired to succeed John Thompson III as the head coach at Princeton. Scott had a 38–45 record through three seasons at Princeton. The team finished sixth in the Ivy League in 2004–05, his first season, with a 6–8 record, before rebounding to a 10–4 mark good for second place in the conference in 2005–06. Scott Greenman, a senior point guard, became Scott's first and only First-Team All-Ivy player in 2006. The 2005–06 season, Scott's second, was filled with some disastrous moments. That season, Princeton scored just 21 points in a loss to Monmouth, tying a then Division I record for fewest points scored in a game since the inception of the three-point line. The Tigers also fell to Carnegie Mellon University — a Division III opponent. It was the first such defeat in school history. The Tigers finished with a 2–12 Ivy record in 2006–07, its first-ever last-place finish in the Ivy League. Scott then served as head coach at the University of Denver from 2007 to 2016. During these nine seasons, Denver went 146–132 and had one postseason appearance, in the NIT, in the same year Denver shared the regular season WAC title in its lone season in the conference. On March 11, 2016, Denver fired Scott with two years remaining on his contract. An associate vice chancellor at Denver commented: "We want to get to the NCAA Tournament in men’s basketball. We looked at what Joe’s team had done over the nine years and decided it was time to make a transition. Postseason success had not occurred." On May 23, 2016, Scott became an assistant coach at Holy Cross for his second stint working under Bill Carmody, having previously been an assistant under Carmody at Princeton from 1996 to 2000. After two seasons with Holy Cross, Scott was hired by Tom Crean to be an assistant at the University of Georgia. On March 31, 2020, Scott returned to Air Force for his second stint as head coach.
Head coaching record
Personal life
Scott's wife, Leah, is a 1992 Princeton graduate and was also a point guard, playing for the Tiger women's basketball team. They have two children, Ben and Jack Scott.
