Walker is named LCSC men's basketball coach

Tim Walker, assistant men’s basketball coach at Lewis-Clark State College for the past four years, has been selected to take over the Warrior program, LCSC President Dene K. Thomas announced Saturday afternoon.

Thomas made the announcement during a press conference in the second floor conference room of the new Activity Center.

“I’m really impressed with Tim’s plans for team development,” Thomas says. “He wants to recruit more freshmen and focus more on players from Idaho. I like that he stresses the importance in the development of the individual player as well as the team as a cohesive unit. We’re excited to keep Tim in the LCSC family.”

Walker was one of three finalists to interview for the position last week. The other two were Todd Eisner, head basketball coach at Bellevue University in Nebraska, and Tim Swanson, golf coach at Treasure Valley Community College in Ontario, Ore., and former LCSC assistant basketball coach.

“We had three excellent candidates after a full and good search,” Thomas says. “Today validates Tim as the best candidate for the job.”

Walker replaces George Pfeifer, who spent 16 seasons as the Warriors’ coach before leaving last month to accept an assistant coaching position at the University of Idaho.

Walker is just the third LCSC men’s basketball coach in the past 31 years. Richard (Dick) Hannan became LCSC’s basketball coach for the 1974-75 season and later coached Pfeifer, who graduated from LCSC in 1979. Pfeifer also served two seasons as an assistant to Hannan before taking the helm to start the 1989-90 season.

“I’m really excited about this opportunity,” Walker says. “This is a wonderful job because of the support of the community, the college and the athletic department.”

Walker expressed his enthusiasm for the job during his interview. Thomas says Walker put a lot of thought into team development during his presentation.

“We know Tim because he is LCSC family,” Thomas said. “The community has adopted him already. He had an outpouring of community support and student-athletes here came in to see me twice during the week and expressed very enthusiastic support of Tim. He’s obviously made an impression on a lot of people.”

Thomas says she offered the job to Walker on Friday while she was in Idaho Falls attending a state economic development conference.

“We wanted to act quickly because this job is important to LCSC,” says Thomas, who is also the school’s athletic director. “We know this is a key recruiting period for our program.”

During Walker’s four years at LCSC, the Warriors posted a 103-34 record and made the NAIA national tournament three times.

Walker was head coach at Montana State-Northern from 1997-2001, where he was the Frontier Conference coach of the year for the 1997-98 season. That team set a school record with 26 victories and advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NAIA national tournament. He posted a 72-55 record at the school and his players had a graduation rate of 90-plus percent.

Walker is a part-time Kinesiology instructor at LCSC and is a native of Absarokee, Mont. He played basketball and graduated from Rocky Mountain College in Billings. He later received his Masters degree in Education-Guidance and Counseling at Montana State-Northern in Havre.

As well as coaching duties, Walker will be responsible for running basketball camps and will serve as activities director for the National Youth Sports Program.

Walker and his wife Lynette, who works for the Department of Social & Health Services in Washington, have a son Jake, age 11.