Joe Esposito

Joseph Esposito (born September 21, 1966) is an American basketball coach.

Esposito is currently the associate head coach at The University of Missouri Kansas City and still a Basketball Analyst on ESPN Las Vegas on his free time.

He was the head coach at Cesar Chavez HS in Phoenix, Arizona for two years and before that was an assistant coach for head men's basketball coach Marvin Menzies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV).

Esposito spent twelve years with Hall of Fame Coach Tubby Smith as an assistant basketball coach and Recruiting Coordinator at University of Memphis, an assistant coach and Recruiting Coordinator at Texas Tech University and the director of basketball operations and assistant coach at the University of Minnesota.

He has head coaching experience at Assumption College, Angelo State University and The Villages Charter Schools.

He was the associate head coach at Tennessee State University working for Frankie Allen.

Esposito's first coaching job came as the assistant basketball coach at FDR in Hyde Park, NY for legendary Hall of fame coach Duane Davis.

Esposito also was named assistant AD and assistant baseball coach while serving there for two seasons.

Esposito was an assistant coach, associate head coach, and head coach at NCAA Division II powerhouse Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts.

The Greyhounds rattled off three straight Northeast-10 Conference Championships in 1990, 1991 and 1992, and notched a pair of NCAA Division II Tournament regional appearances.

The Greyhounds averaged 22 wins a season and no team in the NE-10 has ever won three straight championships like they did.

Assumption also set single-season records for wins and winning streaks at the school with Esposito on staff.

Esposito played a vital role at HBCU Tennessee State University as the associate head coach from 1995-98 for head coach Frankie Allen.

Esposito was responsible for recruiting three Ohio Valley Conference Freshman of the Year award winners.

Only one other school in the nation has had three straight Freshman of the Year award winner Georgia Tech.

His 1996-97 and 1997-98 recruiting classes were ranked among the nation’s top 30 by Hoop Scoop.

He also worked as an academic counselor while at Tennessee State improving their team GPA to over a 3.0 and graduated every player while he was there.

Esposito was hired at Angelo State in March of 1998 by athletic director Jerry Vandergriff.

He took over one of the lowest ranked Division II programs in the Nation.

ASU had three straight last place finished and averaged 2 conference wins a season those three years.

At Angelo State University, his team recorded 118 wins and left the school with the highest winning percentage of any coach in the program's history.

In his first season at Angelo State in 1999, Esposito posted the best turnaround in Division II by any rookie head coach, improving the Rams' record by seven victories and having the first winning season since 1994.

In his second year, he took the Rams to the Lone Star Conference Tournament and wins over nationally ranked Midwestern State and Central Oklahoma.

Esposito joined Coach Smith at Minnesota on the heels of several disappointing seasons for the Gophers, who had made the NCAA Tournament only once since Monson's hiring in 1999.

The 2000 season his team posted a 20-win season, which was the second-best record in school history, surpassed only by Esposito's 2001 team that won 24 games.

In 2000-01, in just three season, the Rams advanced to the NCAA Division II Tournament for the first time in 10 years and the third time in school history.

Angelo State won the Lone Star Conference South Division Championship with a 22-8 record, which tied the highest single-season win total in school history and 11-1 Conference record best ever in the Lone Star Conference.

In addition, Esposito was voted LSC South Coach of the Year in 2001.

In 2002, Esposito led the Rams to its fourth consecutive winning season, the first time ASU had posted four straight winning seasons in two decades.

In just four seasons, Esposito led the Rams to three of the top five single season win totals in school history and three straight post-season berths.

In 2003, ASU posted its fifth consecutive winning season, a mark only matched one other time in the history of the program.

He left the program as one of the winningest coaches in Lone Star Conference history, and graduated 100% of all his four year players.

At The Villages Charter High School Esposito helped advance the school to the Class 3A District 7 Final Four for the first time in school history.

He built the foundation and buzz in the community which has propelled the program to one of the top high school basketball program in the state, still today.

In the first season, the team improved from 8–22 in 2006–07 to 20–14 in 2007–08, and reached the Big Ten Tournament semifinals after defeating second-seeded Indiana.

Esposito was hired by Tubby Smith University of Minnesota on March 29, 2007.

In the 2008–09 season, Minnesota had a record of 22–11 and a bid to the NCAA tournament, where the team was eliminated in the opening round.

In the 2009–10 season, Smith's team struggled throughout the year, However in the Big Ten Tournament, the team won three games in three days to advance to Minnesota's first ever appearance in the Big Ten championship game.

Though it lost that game, the team's run vaulted it into the NCAA tournament for the second consecutive year.

The 2010–11 the Gophers struggled to maintain the program's momentum, however, finishing 17–14.