Scott Davenport retired as Bellarmine University’s men’s basketball head coach on March 10, 2025 after 20 seasons. The local legend finished his career with a sparkling 426-197 record. His 426 wins and .684 winning percentage are easily tops in Knights history. Headlining his list of accomplishments are an NCAA Division II national championship in 2011 and an Atlantic Sun Tournament championship in 2022.
Under his tutelage, five Knights earned All-American status at the Division II level, including Braydon Hobbs, who was named the Division II National Player of the Year in 2012 by the NABC and Basketball Times. Of the 43 Knights in program history to score 1,000 points in scarlet and silver, 14 did so under Davenport.
Davenport was hired on April 29, 2005, becoming the 11th coach in program history. After just six years, he took Bellarmine all the way to the top by leading the Knights to the 2011 NCAA Division II Tournament national championship. For his efforts, he was named national Coach of the Year by two different organizations: the National Association of Basketball Coaches and the Division II Bulletin.
While Davenport built Bellarmine’s program in a perennial national power at the Division II level, perhaps even more impressively, the Knights have continued to succeed in its transition to the NCAA Division I level. In 2022-23, BU opened the season with a victory at crosstown foe and D1 blue blood Louisville and secured a victory over North Florida in the ASUN Tournament.
In 2021-22, Bellarmine posted a 20-win season in just its second year in Division I, finishing 20-13 while playing one of the nation’s toughest schedules. In recognition of his team’s success, Davenport was nominated for the Hugh Durham National Coach of the Year Award, which recognizes coaches from mid-major conferences.
The Knights capped their 2021-22 season by winning the ASUN Tournament title, hosting the championship game in Freedom Hall in front of the second-largest crowd in the history of the ASUN Tournament. The victory sparked a national debate on the NCAA rule mandating that schools must wait four years to be eligible for NCAA postseason play following their transition to Division I. (Had Bellarmine not still been in its four-year transition period, the ASUN Championship would have punched the Knights’ ticket to the NCAA Tournament.)
In the 2020-21 season, Davenport guided the Knights to a highly successful transition as an NCAA Division I school. Bellarmine sported a 14-8 record overall and earned an invitation to a national postseason tournament (CBI) after falling just one game shy of capturing the ASUN Conference regular season crown. The national basketball community took notice of the Knights’ success as Davenport was nominated for both the Jim Phelan National Coach of the Year Award as well as the Hugh Durham National Coach of the Year.
At the Division II level, Davenport experienced nearly unequaled success and was a four-time Great Lakes Valley Conference Coach of the Year. His teams won five GLVC Tournament titles and won or shared six regular season conference titles.
Perhaps more impressive than the domination of the highly competitive GLVC was Davenport’s record in the NCAA Division II Championship. At the time Bellarmine transitioned to Division I, the Knights held the longest current streak of consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances with 11 and had qualified for a 12th straight, but the 2020 tourney was canceled due to COVID-19. In the NCAA tourney, Davenport held a 26-10 record and led his team to four Final Fours (2011, 2012, 2015, 2017).
During Davenport's tenure, five players have been named to All-American squads (Jeremy Kendle, Braydon Hobbs, Jake Thelen, Rusty Troutman, Adam Eberhard) while three have earned GLVC Player of the Year accolades (Kendle, Hobbs, Thelen) and another was named GLVC Freshman of the Year and National Player of the Year (Hobbs).
Prior to coming to Bellarmine, Davenport served nine years as an assistant coach at the University of Louisville under national championship-winning Hall of Fame coaches Denny Crum and Rick Pitino. He also served a year as an assistant coach on Mike Pollio’s staff at Virginia Commonwealth where he coached alongside future Kentucky coach Tubby Smith.
Before heading to Louisville, Davenport spent 10 seasons as the head boys' coach at Ballard High School, where he won a state championship in 1988 and coached two future NBA players in DeJuan Wheat and Allan Houston.
A Louisville native, Davenport and his wife, Sharon, have two sons, Russ and Doug, who are both Bellarmine graduates. Davenport also has a granddaughter, Wren (age 6), and grandson, Jake (under 1), both from Russ. Doug, an assistant coach under his father from 2017 to 2025, took over as head coach on March 11, 2025.
