Montana State Northern Lights & Skylights Athletics

Loren Baker, the Skylights basketball coach from 1981 to 1990, which to this date are the most successful years in the Skylights history. Baker earned 12 Conference and 4 District Coach of the year awards. The Skylights were ranked as high as number one in the nation. This ranking was well deserved because the Skylights averaged 24 wins a season for 10 years, which made Baker the 4th Winningest Coach in the NAIA History. During Baker's career as head women's coach, he and the Skylights had 244 wins - 70 losses: winning percentage of 78%. They had seven conference and 4 district championships, along with 4 National Tournament appearances placing in the top 16 two of the four years. Besides all of the success on the court, Baker graduated all players in his 10 year period, and Northern was #1 in the Country for NAIA attendance for home games. In 1991 Baker took over as head coach of the Lights Basketball team. Baker once again brought the Lights to the forefront of the Frontier conference. The Lights were ranked as high as 10th in the nation, which was the first time in school's history. The Lights averaged 22 wins per season. The lights ended with 132 wins and 47 losses with a winning percentage of 74%. The Lights had 3 conference championship and 2 national tournament appearances, which in 1995 they defeated the #2 team and ended the tournament #8. During this time, the Lights broke 45 team records, had a team GPA of 3.1 and continued the success of being the #1 in conference attendance.