You can listen to Air Force basketball coach Joe Scott talk about the shifting tectonic plates of college athletics and how it has been “horrendous, horrendous” for the service academy, or you can just look at the average Division I experience of his 16-man roster.
They tell the same story.
The Falcons have an average of .41 years of Division I experience, which ranks 359th out of 365 programs.
That’s nine freshmen. Three sophomores. Four juniors. No seniors.
Scott was the Falcons’ coach in 2004, when they went 22-7, hung a Mountain West championship banner, ranked No. 1 nationally in effective field-goal percentage and reached the NCAA Tournament before losing a tight game against North Carolina.
He returned to the academy in 2021 and went from five to 11 to 14 wins. That was 2022-23, just as the NIL and transfer era was dawning in college athletics. The Falcons have gone 9-22 and 4-28 since, winning just three of 38 Mountain West games.
They’re 3-8 this season with a No. 324 Kenpom ranking as they come to Viejas Arena on Wednesday night to face San Diego State in the conference opener for both teams.
In the last seven years, Air Force has gone from 56th in Division I experience (and No. 1 in minutes continuity from the previous season) to 359th.
Transfers? Can’t take them, but can lose them.
NIL? None, since service academy students are technically federal employees and members of the military, precluding them from using their position for private financial gain.
European pros? G League players? Junior college kids? Redshirts?
“We can’t do it,” Scott said in an expansive interview during Mountain West basketball media day in October. “I mean, we can’t do any of this. Nothing. We don’t do anything. But I can lose every one of them.”
Air Force head coach Joe Scott in the second half of an NCAA college basketball game Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024, at Air Force Academy, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
What rankles Scott is the philosophical shift from student-athlete to athlete-student to just athlete to, let’s be honest, professional athlete.
“There’s been no understanding that, ‘Whoa, this is about college,’” he said. “This is about 18- to 23-year-olds growing up. It’s not about money. I know everybody wants money. And I’m not saying they shouldn’t get some money, but that’s not what this endeavor is about. And it just keeps going in that direction.
“When this all started four years ago, I said at the time that the NCAA had a choice to make and say: ‘This is about education. And if you don’t like this model, then you go do something else.’ This is called America. I’m not saying you can’t go chase something else. Go find it and do it. But this is college basketball. This is about education. This is about 18- to 23-year-olds growing up. And we happen to use a ball to teach you those things. You’re fortunate.
“Once we started to say you’re not fortunate, we found people who wanted to be about money, money, money. To me, what it is, it’s called hypocrisy. And when you deal with hypocrisy, you find a lot of unhappy people. You find a lot of problems. That’s what hypocrisy does to you. That’s what this is becoming.”
Complicating things is the eradication of the NCAA requirement that transfers sit out a year before playing again, which served as a deterrent from free-for-all free agency. There’s also the Air Force policy that, once you start your junior year at the academy, you must commit to five years of active duty after graduation plus three more as a reserve or face financial penalties to repay your previously tuition-free education.
So 12 members of Scott’s 16-player roster are freshmen or sophomores. Who knows how many will still be there as juniors?
In the last three years, Scott has lost transfers to Clemson, Cal, Texas Tech, Nebraska and Utah State. He replaced them with true freshmen or, if they left late enough, no one at all.
“From a basketball standpoint, I feel awful for him,” said SDSU coach Brian Dutcher, whose team needed a buzzer-beater in overtime to win at Clune Arena last year. “Those that leave, sometimes I wonder if they’re going to something better than they left. If they’re chasing basketball over a commitment to the military and a commitment to their country, I always find that interesting … because you don’t go to an academy just for the athletics. You go for the total experience and the ability to serve your country.”
Said Scott: “I make a joke of it: If there was a pill I could give somebody to make them stay, if there was a shot that I could put in their arm to get them to understand the value of this place, please give it to me. If you’ve got the magic potion, please let me know what that is. But the whole culture, the whole thing, is something else. It’s not that.
“Nobody’s recruiting high school kids anymore. Let Joe recruit them, let Joe coach them, then we’ll take them.”
Three of the four juniors come from families with a history of military service.
“My dad graduated from here, so I was able to see firsthand what an Air Force Academy education can do for you,” said 6-foot-9 forward Caleb Walker, whose father was a linebacker on the football team and is a retired lieutenant colonel. “Yeah, it’s definitely changing a lot with NIL. (Other schools) are bringing in guys from overseas and from the G League.
“But at the end of the day, we have to focus on ourselves. We can’t control the rules about transfers here. We just have to be the best we can be, and that’s all you can ask for. … We’re definitely underdogs when it comes to Mountain West play. We just have to do what we do.”
Last season, Air Force went 1-19 in the Mountain West play. The lone victory was in overtime against 10th-place Fresno State.
This season, Scott has tinkered with a half-dozen defenses, “all this crazy, different stuff,” trying to find something that works.
That’s helped slow opposing offenses some, but the problem has been at the other end, where freshmen still learning the intricacies of the Princeton offense are struggling to score. The Falcons have lost four straight games while averaging 59.3 points per game.
It’s not like the Falcons are competing in an academically oriented conference like the Ivy League or Patriot League, either. They’re in the Mountain West, where schools have opted in to revenue-sharing for athletes and most distribute seven figures to their men’s basketball teams. New Mexico, with a completely new roster, is 9-2. Utah State lost nine players, brought in 10 — including one from Air Force — and is 9-1.
“If kids leave, they just go get somebody else,” Scott said. “… They don’t take a dip. San Diego State doesn’t take a dip. Boise State doesn’t take a dip. New Mexico doesn’t take a dip anymore. Teams used to take a dip. Why? Because those seniors graduated, and who took their place? Eighteen- and 19-year-olds. Now they get better when they lose guys.”
San Diego State (5-3) vs. Air Force (3-8)
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Viejas Arena
TV: CBS Sports Network
Radio: 760-AM
