Auburn Fires men's Basketball Coach Tony Barbee, Search will Begin Immediately

BY Julie Bennett
al.com
12 March 2014

ATLANTA, Georgia -- Auburn athletics director Jay Jacobs fired men's basketball coach Tony Barbee Wednesday night, less than two hours after the Tigers fell 74-56 to South Carolina in the SEC Tournament.

According to a release from the school, Jacobs fired Barbee at the team hotel following the loss, a move the athletics director made to give Barbee the chance to tell his team before the players left for spring break.

"After careful evaluation of the last four years, I feel this is best for the program," said Jacobs, who also thanked Barbee and his staff for their work. "I believe we should compete for championships in men's basketball. It's time for somebody else to have a turn. We need to find somebody to come in here and take what we have here now and put some more in and compete for SEC titles."

Auburn's search for a new basketball coach will begin immediately. Jacobs is expected to lead the search while taking input from a few basketball advisers.

"We're going to try to move as quickly as we possibly can," Jacobs said. "We're going to be as thorough as we possibly can. We're not going to rush it. I'm going to try to hire the best guy for this basketball program."

Jacobs is not expected to address the media until the search for a new coach has been completed.
Barbee, who had been coaching under a directive from Jacobs to show significant improvement in his fourth season on campus, instead stumbled to his fourth straight losing season, finishing 14-16 overall and 6-12 in the SEC.

"As I said last year, I hoped to see significant improvement this season. Unfortunately, the results fell short of my expectations," Jacobs said. "As Athletics Director, I expect more from our basketball program. That is why I believe it is time to move in a new direction."

Auburn still owes Barbee a $2.4375 million buyout for the remainder of a contract that ends in 2017, payable in monthly installments.

Barbee, hired after a successful four-year stint at UTEP to replace former Auburn coach Jeff Lebo -- who was also fired on March 12, exactly four years ago -- has turned in one of the worst four-year stretches in the program's history, finishing with a 49-75 overall mark and an 18-50 mark in SEC play, a .265 winning percentage that is the second-worst four-year period in Auburn's history.

In Barbee's four seasons, Auburn never finished better than .500 overall, failed to win an SEC Tournament game and dropped 16 of 17 SEC games in the 2013 SEC season.

Barbee took over a basketball program at Auburn that hadn't been to the NCAA Tournament since 2003, but Barbee promised championships, saying that he believed Auburn could be turned around.

"There's no different challenges at Auburn than any other university's basketball program faces," Barbee told reporters on Wednesday night shortly after the loss. "It's just a matter of getting it over that hump, and then it'll turn the other way. But that's a process, and it just doesn't happen overnight."

From the start, Barbee had problems retaining players and building continuity on his roster. In Barbee's four seasons on the Plains, 12 players either transferred or were dismissed, beginning with Earnest Ross, the leading scorer and rebounder from his first season, and ending with Chris Griffin, a junior college transfer from last summer who left the team after just seven games in uniform.

Barbee signed 21 players in his four signing classes at Auburn; Of those 21, only 9 remain on the roster, and five of those just finished their first year in the program, putting Auburn's APR at risk. The reasons for those departures ranged from disciplinary issues to disagreements with Barbee's coaching style and included one high-profile scandal at the end of Barbee's second season on the Plains.

Varez Ward, a Montgomery native brought in as a transfer to play the point, left the team after being implicated in a point-shaving investigation. Ward, who was arrested last summer, has been accepted into a pre-trial diversion program.

Beyond Barbee's struggles to retain players and develop them, the Tigers coach scheduled a practice, told the players then changed them at the last minute. Barbee also had a frosty relationship with the media, showing up more than an hour late for interviews and often cutting interviews short after controversial questions.

Barbee, whose hiring coincided with the opening of Auburn Arena, the program's brand-new basketball facility, tried to reach out to students and build attendance, but with Auburn struggling again this season, Auburn Arena's attendance dropped to 5,823 fans in 18 games this season, the worst mark in venue's four-year history.

Despite his record, Barbee remained optimistic about his ability to lead a turnaround in the program at Auburn.

"I believe in Auburn, I believe it's a place we can build a national championship program, but it doesn't happen overnight," Barbee said in his post-game interview outside the locker room at the Georgia Dome. "It takes time. It's a process, and like I told Auburn president, Dr. Gogue and Jay Jacobs, when they hired me, it wasn't going to be a smooth ride. It just wasn't, you hire me and everything's going to be rosy and here we go, it's going to be a process. In that process, there's going to be some bumps along the way."