George Pfeifer begins his second season as head coach of men’s basketball at Montana State University Billings. He comes to the Yellowjackets with a rich background in resurrecting and building championshiplevel programs.
In one year, Pfeifer took the Yellowjacket program from a preseason cellar predicted finish to the middle of the Great Northwest Athletic Conference. He took over a 1-28 and 6-22 program over the previous two years and not only getting the program competitive, but winning.
Pfeifer comes to MSUB after three years at the University of Idaho where he inherited a program that was in last place and predicted by every media and coaches poll to finish last. In the end they proved those predictions wrong, finishing in the middle of the Western Athletic Conference and winning three of their last five league games to give the program its highest finish in the WAC at that time.
Prior to Idaho, Pfeifer had a very successful tenure at Lewis-Clark State College where he was the head men’s coach from 1989-2005 and the assistant coach from 1987-1989. He gained his 200th career win as the Warrior’s head coach in 2001-02. He then set the school record for coaching career wins with 213 victories in a 105-79 win over the University of Great Falls, while garnering 294 career wins at his alma mater. During his tenure, he built L-C into one of the strongest programs in the Pacific Northwest and led the Warriors to national prominence.
During the 2002-03 season, the Warriors posted a school-record for wins with a 31-6 overall mark and an .837 winning percentage. Prior to his arrival as a coach, L-C had won only one playoff game in its basketball history as a four-year institution (1947). It took Pfeifer only three years to guide L-C to a conference title and their first berth in the NAIA championship beating Simon-Fraser University, Western Washington and St. Martin’s College in a best two-out-of-three series. This marked the first time in the 99-year history of the men’s basketball program that it qualified for a national tournament. That year the Warriors posted 23 wins, which was a school-record at the time for wins in one season. Two years later in 1995, Pfeifer led L-C to its second NAIA berth in a victory over Seattle University.
In his 16 years as the L-C head coach, his teams would play in eight title games, eight district championships and reach the national tournament six times. When he took over the program, the school record for wins in a single season was 21. In Pfeifer’s last six seasons, the Warriors averaged over 23 wins per year. He has been selected Coach of the Year five times and has recruited and coached 18 NAIA all-Americans as well as 18 Academic all-Americans. Of the 75 men’s basketball records held at L-C, Pfeifer-coached teams posted 51 of them.
Not one to shy away from playing tough schedules, the Warriors under Pfeifer’s rein faced 26 NCAA Division I opponents. In 2000, Lewis-Clark State defeated the University of Idaho 68-54 and Boise State by 14 points in 1995.
Prior to his position at L-C, Pfeifer had a two-year stint as an assistant basketball coach under legendary head coach, Dick Hannan. He also served as the head women’s basketball coach at Rocky Mountain College for two years (1985-87). Pfeifer was an assistant coach for men’s basketball at RMC during the 1984-85 campaign under Mark Adams. He was a part of RMC’s first-ever NAIA National Tournament berth after being crowned District XII champions.
Pfeifer served as head coach for two years at Hardin High School in Hardin, Mont., and three years at St. Maries High School in his hometown of St. Maries, Idaho. In his two years at Hardin, Pfeifer led the team to back-to-back appearances at the Montana State High School Championships. Hardin had not been to the state tournament in over 20 years, and was 5-56 over the three years before his arrival. Pfeifer led St. Maries to a 21-3 record in his third year and a fourth place finish at the Idaho State Class A-2 Tournament. Prior to his arrival, St. Maries had only won one game in each of the previous three seasons.
Pfeifer graduated from Lewis-Clark State in 1979 with a bachelor of science degree in social science and a minor in physical education and coaching. He received his master’s degree in secondary education administration in 1989 from the University of Idaho.
Pfeifer has been married for 27 years to Susan, who teaches in the Billings School District. They have three children. Their oldest son, Duncan will graduate from the University of Idaho in the spring with multiple engineering degrees. Daughter, Jennifer, works at Switzer Engineering in Pullman, Wash., and their youngest daughter, Abigail, who is a sophomore at MSUB, majoring in nursing and is a member of the Yellowjacket Cheerleading team. All three of their children have or are attending the University of Idaho. Pfeifer’s son-in-law, Kassidy Probert, is in his second year as business manager at the Moscow Hospital and his daughter-in-law, Kylie is in graduate school at Idaho.
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