Tic Price Joins Lamar Basketball Staff :: Veteran coach brings 28 years of college experience to Beaumont

June 18, 2008

Lamar head coach Steve Roccaforte has announced the hiring of George "Tic" Price as an assistant coach.

Price has 28 years of coaching experience, including 10 as a head coach, with nine combined NCAA and NIT appearances to his credit. He has taken four different teams to postseason play.

"I am extremely excited to have him with us," Roccaforte said.. "He is a veteran coach with a lot of experience, an excellent recruiter and very good floor coach. When the opportunity arose to hire Tic, I couldn't pass it up considering his expertise and knowledge of the game."

Price spent the 2007-08 season as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at North Texas. The Mean Green recorded their second straight 20-win season and notched a school-record 15 home victories. UNT signed three players for the upcoming season including Eric Tramiel, a first team junior college all-America selection.

Southland Conference followers may remember Price from the six seasons he spent on the staff at McNeese State, including five as the head coach. During the 2000-01 season, he was the associate head coach for a team that went 22-9, produced the best turnaround in the NCAA and a nation-leading 17-game conference winning streak, won the SLC title and played in the NIT.

A year later Price took over as head coach and led the Cowboys to a 21-8 record, the SLC regular-season and tournament titles and a berth in the NCAA Tournament. McNeese went 74-68 in his tenure as the head coach from 2001-06.

Price went to McNeese following three years as the head coach at New Orleans and two as the head coach at Memphis. He went 30-27 at UM as the Tigers reached the second round of NIT with a 17-12 mark in his first year.

His time in New Orleans marked his first career head coaching job and saw the Privateers win 20 games each season with a trip to the NCAA Tournament as a No. 11 seed in 1996 and an NIT bid in 1997.

As a head coach he has won 10 different coaching honors including Southland Conference coach of the year, Sun Belt Conference coach of the year, Louisiana Sports Writers Association collegiate coach of the year and NABC District 8 coach of the year.

Price is a native of Danville, VA and played collegiately at Virginia Commonwealth and Virginia Tech. He received his bachelor's degree in Education from Virginia Tech in 1979.

He is married to the former Jamie Lynn Simms and the couple has two children, a son Ryan who played for his father at McNeese State and a daughter, Chanel.

Price began work on Monday.