Yellowjackets Complete First Week of Practice

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BILLINGS, Mont. – Last Wednesday the George Pfeifer era officially began at Montana State Billings.  Pfeifer took over the reigns of the men’s basketball program this past summer and the Yellowjackets began practice Wed., Oct. 15, in preparation for their second season in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference.

MSUB returns six players from last year and has the addition of nine new faces for 2008-09.  Three players, Lance Anderson, Brad Hodge and Ryan Meehan, were signed prior to Pfeifer’s arrival. 

Pfeifer and his staff hit the ground running as they signed six additional players, including two Division I transfers and two junior college transfers that all could have an immediate impact this season.

The returners include junior forwards Tyler Hentzen, Troy Ruff, Mike Barton and Kirk Blaine as well as sophomore guards Kyle Palmer and Brett Taylor. 

Pfeifer brought 6-2 senior guard Mike Hall from Idaho where Pfeifer was for the last two years and 6-6 senior forward Travis Bunker joins the squad from Wyoming.  Hall was a junior college all-American prior to transferring to Idaho.  Junior College transfers, Derrick Wright and Mario Burns join the team from Western Oklahoma State College and will be counted on heavily this season as well. 

In addition, sophomore forward Marty Birky and junior college transfer Adam Weisz also joined the team this summer.  Birky comes to MSUB after one year at Dakota Wesleyan and Weisz played last season at Dawson County Community College.

Below is a Q&A with Pfeifer after the first few days of practice.

Your team is a handful of practices into your new campaign what are your thoughts?
"First let me say these are good young men to be around. They want to achieve. At this early stage they have been very coachable. Their dilemma currently is understanding the pace, aggression, urgency and intelligence required to perform. It isn’t fair that there is so much to learn and everyone is new.  Athletics teaches life is not fair. We overuse the old saying – First you form your habits, then your habits form you.”

What are your early goals and your long range goals as you prepare your team for this season?
"Our immediate goals are to prepare with proper practice etiquette. We need to understand how to play consistently with a fundamental tough-minded approach. Our players need to embrace the notion we coaches cannot afford to coach their effort.  We need to learn how to play the game together both defensively and offensively.  We’re not the type of team that has players who individually can just make plays. It takes time and repetition to foster that global team style of play. We would like to believe that in time through hard work we will be able to find success in being able to compete. We did average getting beat by close to 27 points per game last year, that fact does miscue the measuring device for success.”

How has it been blending the returning players and the incoming players together?
"Of all our challenges and issues as we grow this program, I believe this to be fairly insignificant. The real challenge is getting everyone on the same page. We do not have a lot of time. We’re in a catch 22. We have to drill the ‘parts’ the fundamental components, however if we do not understand the ‘whole’ the 5-on-5 scheme it is going to create a bad moment.”