Princeton Coach Joe Scott

With Coach Scott, Even at 0-2 Princeton Could Push Penn

by Jay Pearlman

After catching a game his first year at Princeton (’04-’05), and three last year, I thought I was getting an idea about Coach Joe Scott. Undersized and tough as a point guard and senior captain for Pete Carril. A graduate of Notre Dame Law School, just long enough at a law firm to realize he wanted to coach (that hit close to home). An eight-year assistant to both Carril and Bill Carmody, improved Air Force over his four years as head coach, and now in his third leading Princeton.

Last season I watched a team that lost at home to Carnegie Mellon on December 28 still alive for the Ivy title into March, and then beating Penn in overtime on March 7; a team with either zero or one Division I-caliber player (depending on how I felt about Noah Savage on any given day) that improved more through its conference season than any team I’d ever seen. Smart and tough, to be sure, but I don’t think I really knew Joe Scott, until yesterday. Now I know him slightly.

While we’ve never met (still), Scott called in response to my request for an interview, and after a couple of days of telephone tag (an hour on the phone with Coach Carril is certainly a good reason to delay an interview), there he was on my cell phone yesterday for a half hour. And as I questioned and listened, I began hearing another voice through the phone; halfway through I thought I was talking to Patriots leader Bill Belichick. And whatever you think of Belichick’s wardrobe, at least in this reporter’s eyes, that’s a compliment of the highest order.

No, I’ve never met Belichick personally either. But I’ve lived in New York when he was defensive coordinator, in Cleveland when a brilliant head coach wasn’t quite homogenized, and in New England recently. Quite obviously, Bill is brighter than everyone else in his profession; so, too, is Joe Scott in his. Bill is so bright that he’s been able to simplify the game (not out of disrespect to the media, but because only the simple and straightforward can be taught or communicated). “Block and tackle,” “play hard all the time,” “compete,” “compete,” “compete”; those are invariably the answers no matter what the question might be. Ok, he also has to manage the salary cap.

I asked Scott about the improvement of last year’s team. He answered that half-way through the year he realized that we were “gonna do it my way”; that we were “gonna compete and play as hard as we can, and if we go down, we’re gonna go down competing.” I asked what it’s like having to break for exams after Christmas in January, rather than in mid-December (only Princeton and Harvard still have that calendar), and after recognizing both that exams are rigorous at Princeton and that his players break while others are playing, he responded that “after exams end, our kids have to work hard to get back in game shape; they have to get back to competing.” And “maybe, once they resume competing, maybe their legs will be fresher than their opponents’.”

I asked Scott about the development of Justin Conway (7.7 pts, 46%, 3.8 bds, 35:26 asst/to), a former walk-on who is now team captain. After correcting me (“he’s no longer a walk-on”), Scott told me that “he’s always been consistent, would do anything to be part of the program”. He added that he “competes harder than anyone else, takes shots he can make, shows everyone else how to play hard, does things on the floor that make his teammates better.” When I analogized to Penn’s Mark Zoller, he agreed with the comparison, adding that “Zoller competes harder than anyone, and makes shots.”

When I asked about Noah Savage (3.3 pts, 1.1 bds, 10.9 min), a starter and the team’s best player the last two years, Coach told me that he had off-season sinus surgery, and he’s “still not sure it was completely successful”; also that junior forward Kyle Koncz (9.6 pts, 46%, 44% threes, 2.2 bds, 1 asst) has developed into a really good player. Focusing on Savage, Joe told me that “we don’t need Savage to play 30 or more minutes, we need him to compete for us for 3 minutes, then for 4 minutes. If he does that he’ll help us win.” He continued that even with Koncz now injured, “we still just need Noah to go out and compete hard, for 3 minutes, for 4 minutes; that’s what we need from him.”

I closed my eyes for a minute (I was parked, not driving), and heard Bill Belichick out of Joe Scott’s mouth. Not because he thinks I’m stupid, not because he keeps secrets from the press, not because I couldn’t be trusted, but because everything else he might have said, all that voluminous stuff we’ve come to expect coaches to say, all those “X’s and O’s,” are just silly details, irrelevant to a truly honest answer to any question about his team. It’s just about “competing”. Okay, about “competing and making shots.”

Anyway, I expect the starting freshman guard tandem from De La Salle High School in California to be improved, as senior forward Luke Owings (8.2 pts, 47%, 40% threes, 2.9 boards) from Maryland is already. And that Conway kid, not afraid to finish, or to set screens that get his teammates open for shots. They lost the opening conference game at Columbia, a game I said on the radio could determine second place in the Ivy League (Columbia’s talent is second to Penn’s), and then lost badly on the second half of America’s worst road trip at Cornell. But if Koncz was able to use exams to mend, if the freshmen from California continue to improve (and don’t hit a wall), and if Savage mends both his sinuses and his psyche and just competes, Princeton should be just fine after they play Seton Hall Monday and return to conference play on Feb 2.

With Scott having simplified things, distilled them down to competing hard, taking good shots, and making some, I’d love to watch one of his practices, and wish I were in the NYC area later this week as exams end and the team prepares for Seton Hall (even though I broadcast for Harvard, I think he’d allow that). But alas, that little pleasure will await February 9, perhaps even next preseason. Even with the Tigers at 0-2, the rest of the Ivy League should be wary of Princeton, under Coach Joe Scott.