Southern Illinois News

Head men's basketball coach George Barber collects 300th career win

With Wednesday night's win over Westminster, Greenville University head men's basketball coach George Barber earned his 300th career win. Barber's tenure at Greenville has featured creativity that has led to success noted on the national stage.

Barber has spent 24 seasons on the H.J. Long Gymnasium sideline. He came to Greenville after serving stints as an assistant men's basketball coach at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., and administrative assistant for the men's basketball program at the University of Kentucky. The 1995-96 Kentucky squad won the NCAA Division I national championship. He graduated from Asbury College in 1986 and completed a master's degree and doctorate at the University of Kentucky.

Since the 2015-16 season, the Panther basketball program has featured "The Syst3m" style of play that has brought increased attention to the men's basketball program. He pivoted his coaching philosophy to respond to an institutional push for higher enrollment and built roster numbers in the program to increase player participation.  Often, Greenville utilizes everybody on an active game day roster of 15-20 players.  In 2019, the team scored 200 points in a single game on the way to establishing the NCAA's all-time scoring record of 135.1 points per game.

Greenville has finished as the national leader in points per game for the past seven seasons, and they currently lead the nation this season. The team scored 3580 points in 2019-20 to set the NCAA Division III single season record for points in a season.

Barber's Panther teams have won 15 or more games in eight of his 24 seasons, including a mark of 21-6 in 2016-17 that produced the second-most wins and second-highest winning percentage in a single season. His squads won 19 games in 2003-04 and 2017-18.

In 2015-16, the Panthers started a run of three consecutive seasons as SLIAC regular season champions and hosted the conference tournament in 2017 and 2018. Greenville advanced to the SLIAC tournament championship game in 2017, 2018, and 2020. The team won the conference tournament and went to the NCAA Division III national tournament for the first time in 2018.

His 2000-01 unit qualified for the NCCAA national tournament as the North Central region champion for just the second time in school history. The team participated in the NCCAA regional playoffs in 2000, 2001, 2004, and 2008. His teams qualified as one of the top four teams for the 2011, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 SLIAC tournaments.  He was SLIAC coach of the year in 2016 and 2018.

In 2016, he passed John Strahl to become the all-time winningest men's basketball coach at Greenville.

A ceremony recognizing Barber's 300th win will occur during pregame at the men's basketball game on Saturday, Feb. 11.

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