The Barbee heads to Auburn....

There is a new basketball coach on the Plains at Auburn...and his name is Tony Barbee. Barbee, the now former coach at UTEP, where he had some success, winning a Conference USA title and being named conference coach of the year this past season. He led the Miners to their first NCAA Tourney bid in a very long time.

The announcement will be coming Thursday afternoon in the building he will be asked to fill up, the $92 million Auburn Arena.

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((Tony Barbee looks happy//Courtesy: utepathletics.cstv.com))

Barbee, a former John Calipari assistant in Memphis replaces Jeff Lebo who was fired...then hired to be the coach at East Carolina. He also will be the basketball programs first black head coach. His strength is as a recruiter, something that will be needed if he is going to resurrect an Auburn basketball program that has been treated as somewhat of an afterthought in the Football crazed region.

Cal Gone: Handicapping Memphis

Now that Coach Cal is gone...

Here's your contenders for the gig...

Tim Floyd/USC- Has a home in Hattiesburg, was rasied in the south, and won't compete with football if he shows...

Andy Kennedy/Ole Miss- Would it be a step backward...? But his incident in Cincinnati may preclude him in all of this...

Frank Haith/Miami (FL)- Haith's ready to get out of town, but it'll be a rebuilding project.

Tony Barbee/UTEP- Coach Cal's, rumored-to-be anyway, hand-picked choice. But would Barbee and assistant Josh Pastner want to leave and head to UK...?

Reggie Theus- Would "Rush Street Reggie" become "Beale Street Reggie?" Would a lack of success in the NBA and the Mountain West stop his candidacy...?

And, yeah, we buried the lead here...

Nolan Richardson- Here's an idea for you... bring Nolan back. He's proven that he wants to still coach since he's been the coach for the Panamanian and Mexican national squads. He's plugged into the Memphis, Oklahoma, and Ark-La-Tex scenes like no other coach available. And it would also give an absolutely cheap pop to a program that needs it right now.

You wanna make a statement...? Make that kind of statement... Let him go for another handful of seasons and give him the ride into the sunset that a lot of people think he deserves.

Just a thought (or two))