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AROUND THE NATION
Dec. 3, 2009
A new arena amps up the pressure for Auburn’s Jeff
Lebo
If you were to pack up your car and take a tour of
Southeastern Conference basketball facilities, the
underwhelming experience would verify what you
already knew, that being that football is king in
that league. Only at Kentucky do you feel like the
school puts more emphasis on its basketball venue
than its football venue.
Most other league members are hanging on to musty
old relics where a fancy video scoreboard is pretty
much the extent of the effort they're going to put
into prettying up the basketball arena. These
decades old structures can help you trace back to
the moment when meaningful architecture in this
country pretty much died (let's call it roughly
1960).
Georgia's Stegeman Coliseum was finished in 1964 and
looks every bit like a building that was built in
1964, if you catch my drift. Two years after that,
Ole Miss opened the Tad Smith Coliseum, a venue with
an awful oval design that puts a person sitting in
the first row at halfcourt further from the action
than a person sitting in the first row at either
free throw line. Brilliant!
Mississippi State's Humphrey Coliseum, christened in
1975, benefits from a superior interior design than
the Tad, but the dated exterior resembles a
megachurch built by Creflo Dollar. Tennessee's
cavernous Thompson-Boling Arena is, well, cavernous.
It's not the most intimate setting for college
basketball, but it more than accommodates any WWE
event that comes to Knoxville (if that’s your
thing).
Rivaling those structures in terms of having little
or no curb appeal is Auburn's Beard-Eaves Coliseum.
It’s the basketball arena equivalent of a broken
down boxer who should have quit fighting years ago.
With no bells or whistles to speak of, the facility
is hardly a positive selling tool for the program.
If you step outside the front door of Beard-Eaves
right now and look past the statue of the soaring
War Eagle, though, you’ll see a brand new basketball
arena being constructed across the street. Once
completed, Auburn’s new facility will provide
everything that the current arena lacks: fancy
locker rooms, new practice courts, luxury suites and
even new space for the school’s athletic museum.
By spending nearly $100 million on a new arena, the
administration at Auburn is sending a clear message
to fans that it’s serious about building a winning
program. Many among the Auburn faithful have
clamored for better facilities, and when the doors
open for the 2010-11 season, they will have that and
then some.
With that being said, Auburn coach Jeff Lebo has
become very much a man on the spot. This marks year
six of his regime, and last season’s NIT bid was the
school’s only postseason appearance over that time
span. Lebo’s overall record at the school coming
into this season was an underwhelming 81-76, with
the Tigers currently sitting at 4-3.
In Lebo’s defense, it wasn’t all tulips and daisies
when he reported for duty back in 2004. Six months
before he sat on the bench for his first game at
Auburn, the program was put on two years’ probation
for improper dealings with AAU coach Mark Komara.
It was a bad conclusion to an up and down tenure for
previous coach Cliff Ellis, and the resulting mess
was Lebo’s to clean up. To make matters worse, four
starters off of Ellis’s last team ended up leaving
the program (Marco Killingsworth and Lewis Monroe
transferred to Indiana, Dewayne Curtis transferred
to Ole Miss and Brandon Robinson flunked out).
Taking that rough start into account, Lebo’s track
record to this point probably can’t be judged simply
on the number of wins and losses he’s put up. The
degree of difficulty he initially encountered at
Auburn was much higher than the average college
coach has to endure. To some extent, you gotta give
the guy a pass.
From a talent standpoint, Lebo’s first two Auburn
teams just weren’t that good, and you can’t really
knock the guy for not bringing in McDonald’s
All-Americans to fill the void. When you’re a
basketball coach at a football first school and your
program is on probation, you’re not going to sign
the Brandan Wrights and Greg Odens of the world.
But while valid arguments can be made as to why
talent acquisition was so difficult for a coach in
Lebo’s position, it’s actually talent retention
that’s been the curious anomaly during his tenure.
If you count the four players who bolted after the
Ellis firing, there have been 16 players who have
transferred, quit or been kicked off the team since
Lebo arrived at Auburn.
In some of those instances, you have to give the guy
a pass, it’s not like he ran every single one of
those kids out of town. Take Kelvin Lewis, for
instance. He transferred to Houston a few years ago
because his dad got a job on that staff and is
currently averaging 15.8 ppg for the Cougars.
The departure of Toney Douglas back in 2005 also
can’t be totally pinned on Lebo. Douglas got it in
his head that he wanted to play point guard, Lebo
wanted him at shooting guard and the resulting
impasse led to Douglas ending up at Florida State.
But the fact remains that Auburn’s locker room door
has been of the revolving variety the last five
years and even Lebo’s most ardent supporters have a
difficult time explaining that away.
The ever changing Auburn roster has had the biggest
negative impact in the frontcourt for Lebo. Most of
his teams have lacked an inside presence, and
Korvotney Barber provided much of it until he used
his eligibility up last season. When Barber broke
his hand back in 2007-08, it pretty much torpedoed
that season (the Tigers limped to a 4-12 SEC
finish).
Although vertically challenged, Auburn did show true
progress with last season’s run into the NIT.
However, some would argue that they benefited from a
down year in the SEC, when league powers like
Arkansas, Florida and Kentucky all fell off the
pace.
As was the case back in 2007-08, injuries have
played a big role in Auburn’s slow start to the
current campaign. Sharpshooter Tay Waller missed the
first five games of the season with a quad injury
while key newcomers Kenny Gabriel and Tony Neysmith
have also missed time due to injuries.
The powers that be at Auburn have stuck with Lebo to
this point because they realize he’s been a good
soldier during tough times. The school wasn’t
interested in a quick fix following Ellis’s
departure, but nearly six years later, the program
is still very much a work in progress.
Is that too long to wait for Lebo to generate
sustained success on the hardwood? His supporters
don’t think so; they preach patience to those who
take him to task. If Auburn flames out this season,
they’ll most likely point to the injuries as the
explanation.
However, a $100 million investment in a new arena
doesn’t speak to patience. It screams that the
powers that be at Auburn want to win right now. And
across the street at a soon to be retired basketball
relic, Jeff Lebo hears that message loud and clear.
What he gets his team to do in response remains to
be seen.
John Stansberry is in his thirteenth season as
a senior writer for collegeinsider.com.
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