This story is part of the IndyStar project “Only woman in the room:” How Indy became top city in nation for women sports execsINDIANAPOLIS — The months, days and minutes are ticking down on an internal clock that is always running in JoAn Scott’s head. Her job is made up of deadlines and timelines and a million other things, but right now, she is in crunch time.Scott is the NCAA’s vice president of men’s basketball, a job that means navigating games, brackets, tournaments, officials, venues and the beloved tradition of March Madness.And what is coming up for Scott in just a few months is a historic moment in men’s basketball, leading the NCAA as Indianapolis does what no city has done before — host the NCAA Division I, II and III men’s Final Fours plus the NIT title game. Four championship crowns in one town.”This is a unique year we’ve never had,” Scott said. “It will be just a big celebration of basketball that this city and state loves.”For Scott, it’s a major undertaking, but she is ready. Men’s basketball has been her thing for as long as she can remember.Scott was in college when she landed a job working for the men’s basketball coach. She spent four years with the team, typing recruiting letters, writing practice plans, running the shot clock at games and helping the coaches put on camps.She absolutely loved it.She went on to work nine years for USA Basketball and the unforgettable Dream Team of 1992. She worked for Nike for 17 years. Then when the job with the NCAA came open, Scott took it. That was 12 years ago. And through those years, she has been a steady force making everything that comes along with men’s college basketball look easy. “She can create order out of chaos,” said Susan Baughman, a friend of Scott’s who has worked with her on major sports events in Indy. “JoAn has got this incredible, both problem-solving mind and a creativity that you don’t always find in a nuts-and-bolts operations person. That is really inspiring to me.”A state-winning high school athleteScott was born and raised in a small farming and railroad community in the middle of Nebraska, population 600. Her dad and his twin brother ran the local Amoco oil gas station and delivered fuel to the farms.Her mom stayed home and was one of those wonderful mothers, making homemade bread, cooking Scott and her three siblings — a brother and two sisters — a hot breakfast every morning and welcoming their teammates to the house before ballgames for dinner. She would put name tags on the table at the place settings with names like Larry Bird and Dr. J.”She was always doing something to fire us up and really be our biggest cheerleader,” said Scott. “My mom didn’t get to play sports, so she was adamant, ‘I want my daughters to play sports.'”And play, Scott did. In high school, she helped lead her volleyball team to two state titles, the basketball team to a state championship appearance and was a shot putter and discus thrower in track. Every now and then, the coach would put her in for a relay.Scott was good enough to walk on to the University of Nebraska-Kearney volleyball team and played all four years as an outside hitter while she worked for men’s basketball and majored in business management.After college, she moved to Colorado Springs to live with a family friend. One day, as Scott was looking for a job in sports, she opened up the newspaper want ads and found an opening at USA Basketball, which had its headquarters in Colorado Springs. There was just one problem. The deadline was the next day.Scott went on her lunch break to buy fancy resume paper and envelopes, went home that night and sat at a manual typewriter creating her resume, which she hand-delivered to the offices of USA Basketball the next day. Ten years later, Scott had climbed her way up to the position of director of basketball operations and worked on some incredible projects, including the 1988, 1992 and 1996 U.S. Olympic men’s basketball teams.Even today when people ask what she does for a living, they want to hear about that 1992 Dream Team, made up of a superstar roster that included players like Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Scottie Pippen, John Stockton and Magic Johnson.”When I tell them I worked with the Dream Team, most of them don’t believe me,” Scott said, laughing. That’s OK. She still has relationships with many of the players from that team, including Barkley, Stockton and Pippen.Of course, those Olympic games were tough work, long days and little sleep. “I worked on everything from camps, gyms, hotel rooms and apparel to tickets. It was laundry, finding the local person to do the laundry and picking up the laundry,” Scott said. “It was everything from, ‘Is the gym open? Are there people hanging out in the gym that shouldn’t be in the gym?’ It was just a little bit of everything.”Then with three Olympics under her belt, Scott got a call from Mike Golub who had worked with the NBA and moved on to Nike. It was a simple exchange. “Hey, would you like to come work here?” Golub asked Scott. The answer was yes.’She is commanding in all the right ways’For the next 17 years at Nike, Scott worked first in the sports entertainment group, helping grow the brand outside of the U.S. That included a global push with Scott traveling the world with NBA players to participate in Nike clinics and games. She also worked on Tiger Woods’ first event with Nike, taking him to Japan.When Nike was in need of an executive on the basketball side of things, they turned to Scott, a role that included organizing the company’s basketball events. When Nike needed help in college sports marketing, they moved Scott to that department where she spent time dealing with athletic directors, coaches — and the NCAA.”I really loved college sports,” Scott said. “Then this job came open at the NCAA.”In the past 12 years, Scott said she is proud of a lot of what has been accomplished, but one event that stands out was the 2021 bubble — when the entire men’s Division I basketball tournament was held in Indy due to the COVID-19 pandemic.The NCAA had three months to figure out how to pull that off. Scott spent her Christmas break putting together a 250-page PowerPoint, working with dozens of other organizations and agencies, including the Marion County Health Department, talking to the NBA which held a bubble in Orlando and Major League Baseball, which had used neutral-site bubbles for the 2020 postseason.”We were calling everybody and anybody,” she said. “Gathering every bit of information we could.”What most people want to talk about with Scott, however, is “they want a little bit of peek or understanding of how we select teams (for the NCAA Tournament),” she said. “Like why did this team get in or why did this team have to fly all the way to Seattle?”While Scott is in the selection room when teams are being picked, she doesn’t vote. She calls herself the air traffic controller. “I’m leading it and telling them what they’re voting on and what’s coming up next.”Scott has had her hands in some of men’s basketball’s biggest events in history, pulling them off with a mix of inner confidence, modesty and the knowledge of an experienced leader.”She is commanding in all the right ways,” said Allison Melangton, senior vice president at Penske Entertainment. “She’s very commanding and she’s unbelievably detailed and organized. And she does a great job working across different people’s personalities and different functions and then pulling them all together.”And that’s exactly what it takes to put on the biggest college basketball tournament in the world every year.”Of course, it’s not just me. It’s a whole lot of other people and organizations,” Scott said. “And that’s what makes it so special.”Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.   This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: JoAn Scott, the woman who leads NCAA men’s basketball, Final Fours