An accomplished coach and 27-year veteran of the collegiate volleyball coaching ranks, Scott Luster has achieved success at every level of coaching. During his career he has led two different schools to a total of seven NCAA Tournament appearances and two Final Fours, while earning conference coach of the year honors a total of five times.
Luster arrived on The Hilltop prior to the 1998 season with several goals in mind. First, he wanted to get career win number 500, something he accomplished during the 2001 season, and is now closing in on career victory number 600. The second goal was taking each of the three schools he has coached to the NCAA Tournament. The Braves have come close to the tournament, posting 19 or more wins in three of his nine seasons and reaching the semifinals of the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament on three separate occasions, but have not quite cleared that final hurdle of advancing to postseason play just yet.
Luster has taken a program which had a combined 71-120 (.372) record in Missouri Valley Conference play prior to 1998 and fashioned Bradley into an annual contender for the regular-season championship, as the Braves have posted a 71-73 (.493) Valley record over the last eight campaigns.
In addition to earning his 500th victory in 2001, Luster also earned Missouri Valley Conference Coach-of-the-Year honors after leading the Braves to a 24-8 record and a third-place finish in the regular-season MVC race with a 14-4 conference mark.
The conference coach-of-the-year honors were the first for a Bradley volleyball coach.
In 2002, Luster guided Bradley to a 19-12 overall mark and an 11-7 conference record. Amongst the victory total was a second consecutive Robertson Memorial Field House win over top-ten nationally-ranked Northern Iowa.
In 2005, Luster’s squad posted its fourth victory in five years against Northern Iowa, sweeping the Panthers in Peoria. Those four defeats are four of the Panthers’ 17 MVC losses in the past nine seasons. However, wins against quality opponents are a staple of Luster’s career and include BU victories over the likes of Arizona State, Virginia Tech, DePaul, Maryland, Iowa and Oklahoma during his Hilltop tenure.
Serving as hosts for the 2002 State Farm Missouri Valley Conference Tournament, Luster and the Braves advanced to the semifinals of the Valley Tournament for third time in four years with a 3-0 victory against Wichita State in the quarterfinals.
Since Luster arrived on The Hilltop six different players have earned a total of 12 first-team all-conference honors, including Lindsay Stalzer, who became the first three-time first-team All-Valley honoree in program history and earned MVC Player of the Year honors in 2005.
Stalzer had a stellar senior season, breaking school and Valley season records for kills with 720 and also broke the MVC career kills mark finishing with 1,948 career kills after leading the nation in total kills in 2005.
All told, Luster has coached 12 of Bradley’s 15 first-team all-conference selections in his nine seasons and had players earn MVC Player of the Week honors a total of 10 times. Bradley had just three first-team all-conference selections and earned MVC Player of the Week honors six times in the 15 seasons prior to Luster’s arrival.
While the Braves have enjoyed success on the court, Luster’s Bradley squads also have sparkled in the classroom. The Braves have totalled 18 first-team MVC scholar-athletes since 1998 and have had a total of nine ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District honorees over the last seven years.
In the 2007 spring semester the volleyball team had all 13 members earn a spot on the Athletic Director’s Honor Roll and was awarded the Game Plan/American Volleyball Coaches’ Association Team Academic Award for the third consecutive year after finishing the school year with 3.46 cumulative grade point average.
With a career average of over 21 wins per season, Luster is quickly closing in on 600 career victories and is just the third coach in school history with 100 victories at Bradley. Ranking second all-time in school-history, Luster joined Minnesota’s Mike Hebert as the only active NCAA Division I coaches with 100 or more wins at three different schools and is second only to Pam Stanek’s (1982-1994) school record of 212 victories.
“I want to establish a tradition of quality volleyball at Bradley and I believe we are well on the path to accomplishing that goal,” Luster said. “We have made great strides both on and off the court and I feel the program is in a much stronger position than when I arrived nearly a decade ago.”
Luster begins his ninth season in Peoria with a career record of 579-387 (.599), a mark which ranks him 20th among active coaches on the NCAA volleyball victory list.
“Scott has done a great job rebuilding our volleyball program and we are fortunate to have his proven talents at our service,” Bradley Director of Athletics Ken Kavanagh said. “A quality individual, his tremendous wealth of experience quickly translated into instant overall success for our team on all fronts, including record accomplishments in the classroom and on the court. We eagerly anticipate further progress and many more exciting times ahead, in our continued pursuit of a Missouri Valley Conference championship and the NCAA Tournament.”
Luster’s collegiate coaching success was nearly immediate when he became the first full-time volleyball coach at Louisville. In his second season, he guided the Cardinals to a 29-21 mark, more than doubling his team’s victory total from his first campaign. A year later, Louisville recorded a 39-14 mark, won the Metro Championship and earned a NCAA Tournament berth, the first by a UL athletic team other than men’s basketball. He went on to post a 140-90 record at Louisville, winning two Metro titles and receiving a pair of NCAA Tournament bids in the process.
But it was at Louisiana State where the colorful Luster achieved major success. In his first season at Baton Rouge, the Tigers claimed the Southeastern Conference title while recording a 33-10 record. The very next season LSU won another SEC title, as well as an NCAA berth with a 35-9 mark.
Luster’s best years at LSU were 1990 and 1991, when his teams were a combined 69-9, won two more SEC titles and made two NCAA Final Four appearances. During the 1990 season, LSU put together a 32-match home-court winning streak, which ranks as the 10th longest such streak in NCAA history.
Overall, Luster was 308-161 at LSU, including an 88-56 (.611) record in SEC contests. His teams won five SEC titles, earned six NCAA berths and his 1991 team’s .946 winning percentage (a 35-2 record) is the best single-season mark in SEC history. Luster was named the SEC Coach of the Year three times, coached six All-Americans and increased the team’s GPA from 2.08 when he first arrived to 3.06 at the end of his tenure.
A native of Fullerton, Calif., Luster began his coaching career with the Orlando Women’s Volleyball Club, leading it to the Florida AAU Championship. After moving to Columbus, Ohio, Luster coached five seasons at Whitehall-Yearling High School, winning the 1979 AAA state championship and being honored by the Columbus Dispatch as the Coach of the Year.
A graduate of the University of Missouri (BS in physiology), Luster served on both the Executive Committee and Board of Directors for the United States Volleyball Association. He also was a highly-rated referee on the international level from 1982 to 1996, allowing him to see the best volleyball competition in the world.
In 1989, Luster was a recipient of the United States Volleyball Association Leader in Volleyball Award, an honor which is bestowed upon those who have contributed to the sport in all phases of the game.
Luster has officiated three NCAA Men’s Championships (1984, 1990 and 1992) and had a strong involvement in the U.S. Olympic Festival, coaching the Midwest squad to a silver medal in 1978 and the South squad to a gold in 1987, serving as head referee in 1982 and as the East Coordinator in 1983.
Luster is the proud father of his daughter Torri and grandfather of toddlers Anna Katherine and Audrey.