Ben Betts’ 29-year coaching history is long and decorated and includes three seasons as the head coach at South Carolina State and assistant coaching stints at Oklahoma, VCU, Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne, Tennessee State, the College of Charleston and South Carolina State. The 2019-20 campaign will be his fifth at Georgia Southern.
Georgia Southern is coming off consecutive 20-plus win seasons for the first time in 30 years, and the Eagles have finished in the top-3 in the Sun Belt in each of the last three seasons. Betts has mentored seven all-conference selections and Tookie Brown won Sun Belt Player of the Year and All-America Honorable Mention accolades in 2019 and Sun Belt Freshman of the Year honors in 2016. In addition, Brown became the first four-time, first-team All-Sun Belt selection in league history.
Betts helped guide the 2016-17 squad to the program's first postseason appearance since 2006, and Georgia Southern ranked fourth in the country in field goal percentage (.499) and 15th in scoring, averaging 82.6 points a game, in 2018-19. GS shot 50 percent or better in 17 contests, including the first five games of the year, and 60 percent or better three times and scored 80-plus points in 18 contests. The 2017-18 team went 21-12 overall and 11-7 in conference play.
Georgia Southern student-athletes have excelled in the classroom as well - all of the program's seniors have graduated during Betts' tenure.
Betts' most recent stop prior to his arrival in Statesboro, a one-year stint at IPFW, came after three years at Tennessee State where he helped guide the team to the 2013 CIT Postseason Tournament. From 2006-11, he was an assistant coach at the University of Oklahoma, where he worked under Jeff Capel. The Sooners qualified for the 2008 and 2009 NCAA Tournaments, advancing to the “Elite Eight” in 2009, and Betts helped to recruit and coach current NBA All-Star Blake Griffin.
From 2003-06 he was the head coach at South Carolina State, where he led the team to an 18-11 record in his first season and the regular season Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference title. He went 19-12 in his second season and 14-16 in his third and final season as head coach of the Bulldogs. Those three seasons, coupled with his 1-2 record as interim head coach at the end of the 1994-95 season, gives him a 52-41 record as a head coach with signature wins over Penn State and Miami (Fla.).
Prior to leading the program at South Carolina State he spent a season as an assistant coach at Virginia Commonwealth (VCU) under Capel in 2002-03. From 1997-02 he was an assistant coach at the College of Charleston. Among the highlights in Charleston are qualifying for the 1999 NCAA Tournament after sweeping through the Southern Conference with a perfect 16-0 record, and a win over third-ranked North Carolina. The team ended the season ranked 16th nationally in each of the two primary NCAA Division I Polls.
Betts was a four-year basketball letterwinner at Roanoke College, helping propel the team to the NCAA Tournament as a player. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physical education from Roanoke in 1990 and his master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling from South Carolina State in 1997.
