UA Pine Bluff Athletics

The dean of men's basketball coaches in the Southwestern Athletic Conference, George Ivory enters his 13th season as Arkansas At Pine Bluff head coach.

Ivory is in his second stint at UAPB, having served as an assistant coach from 2002-06. In his second tenure in Pine Bluff, Ivory has established the program as a perennial conference contender, displaying the same toughness and grit he did as a player that led to his SWAC Hall of Fame Induction in 2019.

Over the past decade, the H.O. Clemmons Arena has become a challenging venue for visiting teams with a game atmosphere ranked as the best in the conference by league coaches last season. 

UAPB has posted winning records at home in league play eight times since 2011, highlighted by a 9-0 mark in 2013. In 2018, a 6-3 home mark helped propel the Golden Lions to the SWAC Tournament Championship game. In 2019, UAPB went 7-2 at home as they finished tied for third in the conference.

Ivory has played or coached in the NCAA Tournament four times. In leading UAPB to the SWAC Tournament title in 2010 and an NCAA Tournament win over Winthrop, the second-round matchup with Duke gave Ivory a full-circle moment. 

Some 24 years earlier, Ivory had his first encounter with Duke as he led his alma mater, Mississippi Valley State, to the 1986 SWAC Tournament Championship and a berth in the NCAA Tournament. 

As a junior, Ivory and the Delta Devils gave the #1 Blue Devils a bit of hell and them some, battling to the end before falling 85-78.

Ivory, who was also a part of NCAA Tournament teams as an assistant women's coach at Jackson State (1995) and assistant men's coach at MVSU (2008), is looking to lead the Golden Lions to a bounce-back season and into the title hunt this season.

As a player, Ivory was a four-year standout for the Delta Devils, averaging 14.6 points and 5.0 assists during his career. As SWAC Freshman of the Year, he led Mississippi Valley State to its first winning season in 1984. 

In the championship season of 1986, MVSU had its first 20-win season led by Ivory, who averaged nearly 16 points and five assists per game in earning SWAC Tournament MVP accolades. 

In his senior year, Ivory was the conference’s preseason player of the year and led Valley to a second-place finish in the SWAC while averaging a career-best 21.8 points per game and shooing better than 58 percent in the first year of the three-point line in college basketball. He led the SWAC and was fourth in the country with 109 made threes.

He earned first-team All-SWAC, SWAC Player of the Year, and Black College All-American accolades, and is still ranked among Mississippi Valley State’s career leaders in points, steals, assists, minutes, and games played.

Ivory, who graduated from MVSU in 1988, was drafted by the Wyoming Wildcatters of the CBA, while having other professional tryouts with the Chicago Bulls and Harlem Globetrotters.

Ivory entered the coaching ranks as a graduate assistant and later an assistant coach for the women’s program at Jackson State (1991-98), where he earned his Master’s degree and combined to win three SWAC regular season or tournament titles.

Ivory then returned to his alma mater under his college coach Lafayette Stribling as an assistant coach for four years (1998-2002) before his first stint at UAPB as an assistant coach (2002-06). 

Following one year as an assistant coach at Grambling (2006-07), and again at Mississippi Valley State (2007-08), where the Delta Devils won the SWAC Tournament championship, Ivory was named head coach at UAPB.

Always community-oriented, Ivory and his teams annually speak to students at Pine Bluff area schools, looking to inspire the next generation of graduates and leaders. Earlier this fall, Ivory ensured each member of his program was registered to vote and, on Election Day, the team went as one to the polls to make their voices heard.

Ivory, who recently coached his son Khalid, who's now a UAPB graduate assistant coach, will now coach his younger son George III, a Golden Lion freshman.

Ivory is a member of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, the Black Coaches Association, the Health, Physical, and Recreation Association, and Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.