Profile of Joe Scott: Princeton's HC - from the NY Times

[MrMustang1965]

Joe Scott was young and successful, a basketball coach on the fast track. After guiding Air Force to its first N.C.A.A. tournament appearance in 42 years, Scott had been named Mountain West Conference Coach of the Year and finished fourth in voting for National Coach of the Year.

But instead of pursuing a job in a glamour conference like the Big East or Big Ten, Scott moved on to the Ivy League, where they give no athletic scholarships and have little television exposure, and the players often are more talented in the classroom than they are on the basketball court.

It is not an athletic league that appeals to many, except, maybe, to a basketball junkie who saw something special in returning to his alma mater.

"I have two things in my life: coaching and my family," Scott said. "I don't have any hobbies. I don't know how guys play golf. Put it all together, it made sense for me to come back to Princeton. I'm from New Jersey. There was the basketball tradition. There was Coach Carril. There was all the winning over the years. It was important that we keep doing that and do it at a higher level."

There is indeed a Princeton mystique, which stretches back to the early 1960's.

The Tigers have made 21 N.C.A.A. tournament appearances since 1960, winning or tying for 24 Ivy titles during that time.

But that tradition is best understood by someone who has experienced it.

Scott, 39, grew up in Toms River, N.J., and was a three-year starter at Princeton under Coach Pete Carril. He later served as an assistant there for eight seasons.

"I wouldn't say we were surprised he came back here," Princeton guard Scott Greenman said. "Anybody who has played here knows this is a special place. He wanted to come back and coach at his alma mater, a great thing for anybody to do. And he wants to turn us into a Top 25 team."

After graduating from Princeton in 1987, Scott attended law school at Notre Dame and went on to work for a law firm in Morristown, N.J. But he quickly concluded that the legal field was not for him.

He became a volunteer assistant coach at Monmouth University in 1991 and joined Carril's staff a year later, a role he also filled under Carril's successor, Bill Carmody. In 2000, he accepted the head coaching job at Air Force, a program that had not had a winning season since 1977-78.

Many considered Air Force a lost cause.

"I underestimated the challenge there," Scott said. "I didn't realize how deep 25 years of losing goes. It affects everything, which is why it was so difficult. It affects everyone from the top on down. A college basketball program isn't just the coaches and players. It's the support, the administration, the community. The losing culture was so imbedded there."

It took Scott four years to engineer a remarkable reversal of fortunes.

The Falcons were 22-7 last season, the best record in the program's history, and won the Mountain West regular-season title for the first time. The team led the nation in defense, holding its opposition to 50.7 points a game.

The success put Scott in the spotlight.

He was considered for head coaching jobs at Texas A&M and Southern Methodist and was mentioned as a candidate for the job at St. John's.

Although he said he was never offered any of those jobs, it seemed only a matter of time until he would land a head coaching job with a major Division I program.

Instead, when John Thompson III left Princeton to take over at Georgetown, Scott accepted an offer to return to the campus in central New Jersey.

Considering that the previous four coaches at Princeton were Butch van Breda Kolff, Carril, Carmody and Thompson, Scott does not see the Ivy League position as step in the wrong direction.

"Somebody said to me, 'You don't seem like a climber,' " Scott said. "My response to that was that of the last four coaches at Princeton, one became coach of the Lakers, the next turned down Virginia, Vanderbilt and the Atlanta Hawks to stay, the next guy went to Northwestern and the next guy went to Georgetown.

"It seems like it's a great place to be, and if you are a climber you can do that, too."

But before he takes any other steps, his focus will be on turning a good Princeton team into one that can win in the N.C.A.A. tournament. The Tigers won the Ivy League title last season but lost to Texas in the first round of the tournament.

Princeton is 1-2 this season, having lost to fourth-ranked Syracuse and, in double overtime, to Wyoming. They play at Lafayette today.

Scott insists the Tigers will be better when they master a new match-up zone defense he has installed and an offense that includes several twists on the traditional Princeton style that relied on 3-point shooting and back-door cuts.

"Princeton was in the top 10 six years ago when I was an assistant," Scott said. "At Air Force, I had a kid named Nick Welch who nobody recruited, and he outplayed the eighth pick in the country in Rafael Araujo in two straight games. He just killed him. That's all I need to know to tell me we can find the same type of players at Princeton.

"If I didn't think I could do something special at Princeton, I wouldn't have come back. I'm not basing that on pipe dreams. I'm basing that on experience."

[MrMustang1965]

(continued)

"Somebody said to me, 'You don't seem like a climber,' " Scott said. "My response to that was that of the last four coaches at Princeton, one became coach of the Lakers, the next turned down Virginia, Vanderbilt and the Atlanta Hawks to stay, the next guy went to Northwestern and the next guy went to Georgetown.

"It seems like it's a great place to be, and if you are a climber you can do that, too."

But before he takes any other steps, his focus will be on turning a good Princeton team into one that can win in the N.C.A.A. tournament. The Tigers won the Ivy League title last season but lost to Texas in the first round of the tournament.

Princeton is 1-2 this season, having lost to fourth-ranked Syracuse and, in double overtime, to Wyoming. They play at Lafayette today.

Scott insists the Tigers will be better when they master a new match-up zone defense he has installed and an offense that includes several twists on the traditional Princeton style that relied on 3-point shooting and back-door cuts.

"Princeton was in the top 10 six years ago when I was an assistant," Scott said. "At Air Force, I had a kid named Nick Welch who nobody recruited, and he outplayed the eighth pick in the country in Rafael Araujo in two straight games. He just killed him. That's all I need to know to tell me we can find the same type of players at Princeton.

"If I didn't think I could do something special at Princeton, I wouldn't have come back. I'm not basing that on pipe dreams. I'm basing that on experience."