Brown Second-Fastest to 700 Wins

04/17/2018 

SUNY Cortland head baseball coach Joe Brown earned his 700th career victory on April 10 when the Red Dragons defeated his alma mater, Ithaca College, 10-4.

Brown, in his 19th season at Cortland, is the second-most-efficient Division III coach to reach the 700-win mark, accomplishing the feat in only 882 games. The late Don Schaly, who coached at Marietta College, reached the same total in 876 games. In all, Brown is the 38th Division III baseball coach to win 700 games.

In 2015, Brown led SUNY Cortland to a national title and a final record of 45-4. He was named the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) and D3baseball.com Division III National Coach of the Year.

His teams have made 18 NCAA tournament appearances and played in 10 World Series. Brown’s teams have won 15 SUNYAC titles in his first 18 seasons and his 0.795 winning percentage (through April 15) is the best of any active coach nationally (NCAA Divisions I, II or III) with at least 10 years of experience.

Brown is a 10-time recipient of the ABCA New York Region Coach of the Year and has won SUNYAC Coach of the Year six times. Thirty of his players have been chosen as All-Americans, including six who were selected in the MLB draft. In all, 19 of Brown’s players have gone on to play professionally.

Prior to his promotion to head coach, Brown was the top assistant coach and pitching coach at SUNY Cortland. He also has coached the Ithaca Lakers (1992-99) and the Vermont Mountaineers (2013-16) of the Northeastern Collegiate Baseball League. He led the Lakers to three league titles and won another with Vermont in 2015.

A 1990 graduate of Ithaca College, Brown played on the Bombers’ 1988 NCAA Division III championship squad. Brown was an assistant baseball coach at Finger Lakes Community College (1991) and Miami (Ohio) University (1992) before arriving at Cortland.