Archive for the ‘Basketball’ Category

Barbee does it again, welcome Chris Denson

Add another one to Tony Barbee’s first signing class.

Tuesday morning, Shaw (Columbus, Ga.) High point guard Chris Denson inked with the Tigers, according to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.

Denson, at 6-foot-2, 180 pounds, averaged 27 points per game as a senior, while racking up six assists, five rebounds and three steals per game, according to AuburnSports.com.

Three players have now signed on to play under Barbee in his first year on the Plains — Denson, swingman Josh Langford and forward Luke Cothron.
Langford, at 6-7, 203, out of Lee High School in Huntsville, was rated the top recruit in the state after finishing his senior season averaging 22 points and 13 rebounds per game.

War Eagle Luke Cothron

The Huntsville basketball pipeline now apparently runs through Auburn.

Auburn coach Tony Barbee signed his second Rocket City prospect in as many weeks, as highly touted forward Luke Cothron, who inked with the Tigers on Thursday,  will join Josh Langford to suddenly give Auburn’s frontcourt of the future a formidable one-two punch.

“Luke gives us a different level of talent,“ Barbee said in a university statement. “He is an immediate difference maker for us along the frontline. He is a guy who has the ability to score the ball in a variety of ways inside and outside. He has a knack for being around the ball which makes him a great rebounder.“

The Auburn Hype Machine, Chizik and Barbee get recruiting.

In Gene Chizik’s first year at Auburn, his staff, once it was fully assembled, made a significant splash in recruiting during its initial month.

It seemed the Tigers pulled some of the nation’s better recruits out of Trooper Taylor’s backward hat, as the coaches only had a short amount of time to make an impact on the trail.

With a full year under its belt, Chizik’s staff really showed what it was capable of this past February, signing a top-five class across every recruiting board in the nation.

Huntsville (Ala.) Lee High School small forward Josh Langford was committed to Louisville early on in the process and decided to back off his commitment. He visited several schools including Auburn last weekend for A-Day and Ole Miss on April 9th.

Langford left Auburn after his visit very high on the Tigers. Today he made it official when he signed scholarship papers to play for Tony Barbee and the Auburn Tigers.

The 6-foot-6, 210-pounder averaged 21 points and 12 rebounds as a senior on the 5A state championship team. Langford was also named tourney MVP. He projects as a full qualifier and will enroll at Auburn this summer.

Tony Barbee is expected to fill his coaching staff at Auburn entirely of his former assistants at UTEP, a source close to the hiring process confirmed Sunday to the Opelika-Auburn News.

Milt Wagner, Tony Madlock and Randall Dickey are expected to be named assistant coaches, while Mike Babul will be Barbee’s director of basketball operations. All four served on Barbee’s staff at UTEP throughout his four-year stint with the Miners.

Welcome to new Auburn Basketball Coach Tony Barbee

Tony Barbee, a 38-year-old up-and-comer who rejuvenated UTEP basketball over the past four seasons, will be named Auburn’s new head basketball coach, the Opelika-Auburn News has confirmed through sources close to the program.

Auburn is expected to announce the news later tonight and a press conference will be held tomorrow afternoon.

Barbee will become Auburn’s first black basketball coach in program history and will join track coach Ralph Spry Jr. as the only two minority head coaches at the university.

And the names just keep on coming.

Jay Jacobs appears to be making the rounds in Texas, as Sam Houston State’s Bob Marlin is the newest name to emerge on Auburn’s search for a basketball coach.

A Fox TV station in Huntsville is reporting the story, quoting Sam Houston State athletic director Bobby Williams. I’ve got a call into Williams, whom I expect to call me back and tell me the same thing.

North Texas coach Johnny Jones will interview to be Auburn’s new basketball coach some time this week, the Denton Record-Chronicle is reporting tonight.

Jones’ candidacy is the latest example of the revved-up pace to Auburn’s coaching search this week, as a number of top candidates are now officially done for the season after exiting from their respective tournaments.

Jones, 50, took North Texas to the NCAA Tournament for the second time in the past four seasons this year after beating Troy in the Sun Belt Tournament. The 15th-seeded Mean Green lost their first-round game to Kansas State last Thursday, 82-62.

(Photo credit: AP)

Here are some names to consider this week as we parse through this slow-moving Auburn basketball coaching search.

Mike Leach
Turner Gill
Brian Kelly
Tim Brewster
Chris Petersen
Jimbo Fisher
Will Muschamp

Those were the names I dropped in my first “looking forward” story in the search to replace Tommy Tuberville. I’m not demeaning myself in any way as a reporter, but this is what we do. Few, if any, high-ranking officials are just going to fax over their list of candidates to the local beat writer. Therefore, we have to throw a few names against the wall and see if they stick.

There’s no freshly enforced probation, no lack of scholarships and no gray eyesore of a coliseum awaiting Auburn’s new head basketball coach.

The belief that winning can’t happen without cheating at Auburn, especially after the Tigers’ 24-12, 2008-09 season, is also fading away.

The pay promises to be much better, too.

When athletic director Jay Jacobs starts to sit down with his potential candidates in the coming days and weeks, he won’t have to do nearly as much selling as Hal Baird did when he hired Jeff Lebo in 2004.