Auburn signs #1 basketball player in state of Alabama

Let me write that one more time...  "Auburn signs the #1 basketball player in state of Alabama".  This week Josh Langford, out Lee High School in Huntsville and ranked the #1 rated player in the state by the Birmingham news committed to Auburn.  Yes he might not be DeMarcus Cousins but it is still a huge signing nonetheless.  As I wrote in the post below, Auburn has been the worst program in the SEC over the last twenty years and has been a complete non-entity in basketball recruiting in the state of Alabama over the past decade.  When you put it in that context I do not think you can understate this signing.  It is just the thing Auburn and coach Barbee needed to really get things started.

Couple this signing with the new Arena and coach Barbee and I have never been this excited about Auburn basketball.  I am definitely a little more excited than most people about this signing because I live in Huntsville and I kept up with the Lee vs. Butler rivalry and their chase for the 5A state title.  Butler in Huntsville had won the last two 5A state titles before Lee and Langford finally broke through this year.  I have met Lee coach Greg Brown and other members of his staff and really thought a lot of them so I was definitely cheering hard for Lee and Langford this year.

As I just posted on another site I think this is Auburn's biggest signing since Doc Robinson but I would compare it more to signing Bryant Smith who was the heart and soul of the 1999 team.  To me Langford is more like Smith (another Huntsville product) except with more upside offensively in my opinion.  I think the signing of Smith was the first step toward the 1999 dream season and I am sure hoping the signing of Langford will be the first step toward another dream season.

I thought Kevin Scarbinsky wrote the best article on the signing.  There are several nuggets of information that can be gleaned from this article.  First, how awesome is it that Barbee was at Lee High School to see Langford the morning after his intro presser???  Finally, FINALLY Auburn hires an up-and-coming basketball coach who appears to be a good recruiter.  Auburn has never been able to maintain any consistency in recruiting with coaches who were older and on the back side of their career in Sonny Smith, Tommy Joe Eagles and Cliff Ellis.  It did not get any better when they hired a younger coach in Lebo whose strengths were not recruiting.  Maybe and hopefully Auburn has finally gotten it right.

The results of Barbee putting Langford at the top of his board and putting in that extra effort? 
"He could’ve gone and recruited anyone else in the state," Langford said. "He came here first. It was a great feeling when he did that. It made me look at Auburn a little bit harder."
How long has it been since we heard any top recruit in this state say that???  I can help you, it sure hasn't happened in the last decade.

Next we get this info from Coach Brown... 
"The Lee coach said Barbee sent a message on his first visit with his actions and his words. "He told me, ‘This kid is a priority. This kid is not getting out of Alabama,' '' Brown said. "Those were his exact words." When’s the last time an Auburn basketball coach said those words, meant them and then backed them up?"
I can answer that for you Kevin, how about never?  Auburn fans have waited and waited for a basketball coach to do this.  Quality basketball players have streamed out of this state for the last decade and most did not even consider Auburn and many said Auburn did not really recruit them.

We know this is true in this case...
""When Coach Lebo was there, he didn’t recruit me that much," Langford said. "When Coach Barbee came in, he looked at me hard."
I will admit I do not know much about big-time basketball recruiting but this is not the first time that a big-time recruit in this state has said that.  I know you have to limit and narrow your scope in recruiting to guys you think you can get but you also have to take a shot at a few of the big boys as well.  It does not appear Jeff Lebo was doing that near enough.  I have always said we have to build our team from our standard recruiting region.  The best example is the 1999 team.  Other than Mamadou, all the starters were from Alabama and Georgia.

Langford even showed us our best pitch to keep some of these guys close to home...
"It’s three hours away. In-state. Family can watch me play. Academics. Everything’s right here in the state in Auburn. So I don’t see a reason to go out."
BINGO!!!  I am sorry but that pitch does not get old and will always be effective when used correctly.  Just about every great player has friend and family that want to watch them play.  From my limited experience in youth sports I can tell you that is a fact.  Even if we cannot wrestle a DeMarcus Cousins away from the big boys we should be able to get our share of the top ten to twenty players in the state every year with that pitch.  I just love it that Barbee came in with the attitude that "this kid is not getting out of Alabama".

To top it off we get the ancillary benefit of a little shot at Bama...
""Alabama? I mean …," Langford said. And then he laughed. "I like Alabama and everything, but they weren’t on me that hard until Barbee came in. It was like Alabama decided to recruit me when Barbee came in, so I said, ‘I’ll just go with Barbee.' ''
To say that Anthony Grant has underwhelmed in his first year as Bama's coach is an understatement.  The guy did not make a big splash in recruiting like Barbee did here and was pretty much a flatliner throughout his first season in Tuscaloosa.  You can almost tell that Grant longs for his old stomping grounds in Gainesville.  Right now it sure appears that Auburn might have made the better hire but time will tell.

Finally, maybe this signing will open the doors in this part of the state for more big players...
"Langford wants to bring others with him, like 6-8 Luke Cothron, a Huntsville native who played last season at a North Carolina prep school. Recruiting insiders say Cothron may be the next Auburn signee.  "I think he’s supposed to be coming," Langford said. Then there’s Langford’s cousin, Devin Langford, a 6-6 junior at Lee, who attended Thursday’s signing.  "He’ll be even bigger" as a recruit, Brown said, adding that all of the coaches who visited recently offered scholarships to both Langfords. And don’t forget 6-1 Butler High School junior Trevor Lacey, who’s expected to be the No. 1 player in the state next year. "I’m gonna try to get Trevor, too," Josh Langford said. "
Again, as an Auburn fan and a resident of Huntsville I would sure love to see this thing snowball and Auburn get a few more of these kids.

Auburn basketball and optimism...  Those are two things that have rarely if ever been linked together.  I think it says a LOT that they are right now.

A-Day 2010 Review

Well first let me give a little blogger's note.  This post officially brings me up-to-date on the blog.  I know that not many people will be interested NOW but I finally finished my basketball posts (a month late) and they are below this post.  I feel bad about that but I do not feel bad about not having any more football posts this spring.  I think I am actually on time for once since A-Day is basically the only thing anyone has actually SEEN this spring.

I used to dread the spring sunshine pumping of the Tuberville era.  The open practices drew a lot of the hard core fans in the area and they usually posted their take in one of the various Auburn forums.  Plenty of them would make it around to me.  After you read one it seemed like Auburn would be better than the Dallas Cowboys.  Those posts used to drive me crazy.  Now I actually miss those posts.  Why?  Because at least it was an opinion based on someone actually SEEING the practice.

We now have the rigid draconian no-access rules (copied from the dictator across the state) that prevents anyone from seeing our top secret practices.  It is pathetic, it is ludicrous, it is sad.  It was never more so than last week for the last big scrimmage.  Auburn had the poor beat writers locked out and was then twittering lame comments to the fan base.  To top it off, the dictator across the state who sets the standard for lack of access allows stats to be compiled and provided to the fan base for most scrimmages but NOT at Auburn.  That is my lowest expectation and Auburn is not even providing that.  Obviously if the $abatron allows it, it cannot hurt.  Come on Auburn, at least give us some stats.

With that said it has been really sad reading all of the spring practice "reports" and especially the "analysis" based on those reports.  It is all hearsay and supposition.  It has been full of "well Coach Chizik is not talking about this guy so he must be doing bad" kind of stuff.  I have quickly lost interest in it.

That brings us to A-Day 2010.  Usually A-Day is not too exciting but again since it is now the only time anyone gets to see the team play it is a little more noteworthy.  It also gets more interesting when the team is replacing their quarterback.  That is definitely the place to start with A-Day 2010.  Here are the stats:

•Barrett Trotter completed 7-of-9 passes for 154 yards, including touchdown passes of 50 and 44 yards.
•Neil Caudle was 17-of-21 for 199 yards and had a 70-yard touchdown pass to receiver Quindarius Carr.
•Cameron Newton was 3-of-8 for 80 yards.
•Clint Moseley was 10-of-12 for 55 yards.

I watched the entire game and from my perspective Barrett Trotter looked the best.  Neil Caudle was right there with him.  However after watching how they handled the playing time it appears that Cam Newton has already won the job.  I had assumed that was already the case but was impressed with Trotter's command and Caudle's release.  Clint Moseley only came in for mop-up duty in the second half so I do not think he is at the level of the others. 

Physically Newton displayed some of his raw ability.  You could see how big he was just standing there.  You could also see his arm strength when he threw a deep pass.  Unfortunately you also saw it on a few short passes when he threw two balls way too high.  What we did not see was his running ability and that is a big part of his game.  Basically you do not bring in a kid of Newton's caliber to sit the bench.  I fully expect him to be the starter next season barring injury.  However A-Day 2010 definitely showed that he still has some things to work on.

You have to feel bad for Neil Caudle and I do.  The guy sure looks like he has some big-time ability but has just never been able to put it together good enough to get the job.  I think he will back up Newton although Barrett Trotter has to be uncomfortably close in his rearview mirror.  Trotter looked poised and aggressive from the start.  He came out firing and delivered.  I think he will back up next year if nothing happens to Newton and start in 2012. 

I also have to tip my hat to Gus Malzahn as each quarterback including Clint Moseley looked well-coached.  They all seemed to understand the offense and got the ball off quickly.  I was also very happy to see that all of them had fairly strong arms.  There were no Brandon Cox or Chris Todd weak arms in the bunch.  Thank goodness...

The running back discussion pretty much starts and ends with Mario Fannin.  He far and away looked like the best running back out there.  The offenses did not run that much anyway.  None of the other running backs did anything impressive that I saw.  The best running play outside of Fannin was Terrell Zachary on a reverse.

The wide receivers looked good as a whole and actually had the best running plays of the day on runs after they caught the ball.  Terrell Zachary took a short pass and took it to the house and Quindarious Carr from my hometown and current residence of Huntsville, Alabama made the play of the day.  Carr took a mid-range pass and put on a Bo Jackson-esque display of speed for a 70-yard touchdown.  Several defenders had great angles on Carr and he outran them.  It was a WOW play and gave Carr a well deserved game MVP award. 

The offensive line appeared to be a wall around the quarterbacks for most of the game so you have to give them a thumbs-up it appeared.  The defense was hard to comment on.  To me, they looked like a sparring partner for the offense.  They were as vanilla as it gets most of the day.  They got a few sacks but only a couple looked like real ones.  They played hard and made a lot of tackles but they also missed quite a few as well.  It was pretty hard for me to get a feel for the defense.

About the only thing that jumped out to me is that I hope Antoine Carter stays healthy.  He could have a big year.  He has had the raw ability his entire career but I sure hope he can put it all together this coming season.  Well that is about it.  As I said earlier, this or any other opinion may be way off but at least we finally got to SEE some of the 2010 Auburn Tigers.

Auburn Basketball Analysis

 

Here are the facts. Since the SEC went to divisions in 1992 Auburn has 180 regular season conference losses. That is only second to South Carolina’s 182 regular season conference losses. I believe that if you consider the fact that South Carolina has had to play Kentucky one more time than Auburn every season in that time that you have to say Auburn is the worst basketball program in the conference since the SEC went to divisions. Kentucky is BY FAR the best team in the conference since the SEC went to divisions. There is no one remotely close to their 234 regular season conference wins. The second best total is 181 wins by Florida. South Carolina has had to play them twice every year as well.

Also when you add to those facts that Auburn has also played in the Beard Eaves Mausoleum that entire time you have to say Auburn is the worst basketball program in the conference up till now. Finally though after 20 years of mostly bad to mediocre basketball Auburn is poised to really do something about it. Auburn basketball will move into the new Auburn Arena along with what appears to be a young charismatic up-and-coming head coach

The last post was about my memories, this post is about my takes on various things regarding Auburn basketball through the years and on current events, let’s get started…

THE BUILDING
Mausoleum:
1 : a usually stone building with places for entombment of the dead above ground
2 : a large gloomy building or room

I believe I can safely say using the paragraphs above as evidence that most of Auburn’s teams have been “the dead above ground” and WOW I think everyone can agree that Beard Eaves was a “large gloomy building”.

As I have stated in detail, I have seen a lot of basketball games in that dump. I also jogged in it, saw concerts in it and graduated in it. I still do not have anything good to say about it. It has always been “The Mausoleum” to me. I could not believe some of the nauseating sentimental takes I read before and after the last game against Miss St this year. I mean give me a break. The women had a few moments in there but trying to talk about all the men’s basketball memories in the mausoleum? I think I covered most of them in my last post . There just are not that many and I do not think anyone has ever walked in that tomb and said “wow what a great place to play basketball”.

A LARGE GLOOMY BUILDING… Good bye and good riddance Beard Eaves Mausoleum. I will not miss you and will feel much better when you are a PARKING LOT.

THE COACHES
Before I start I would like to establish a point of reference. Who is the best basketball coach Auburn has ever had? It is not even close. It is the man whose name is part of the sorry building I talk about above. Joel Eaves. He certainly deserved a better building to put his name on. Coach Eaves did coach in a different era of basketball but it was not like the Auburn job was any easier back then. I grade a coach on their conference record and Eaves’ conference record was spectacular. His teams went 124-75 in conference.  He still holds the record for most wins and most conference wins in Auburn history. He went 213-100 overall. He is the best pure and simple. The only other basketball coach at Auburn to compile a winning conference record has his name on the football stadium…

Sonny Smith

Sonny Smith was obviously a good coach as our greatest NCAA tournament success was under him. However as good as that tournament success was his teams never had really good regular season conference records. In fact Smith finished his career with a losing record in conference. To me as I said above that is the biggest indicator of how good a coach was.  Sonny Smith went 173-154 overall and 84-114 in conference.

Also all of his tournament success was when had Chuck Person on the team. We won the SEC title and advanced to the Sweet Sixteen in 1985 and made it to the Elite Eight in 1986 with Person. Without Person or at least an experienced Person we went out in the first round in 1983 to Richmond in Charles Barkley’s last game. We did not make it past the second round in 1987 or 1988. So you kind of have to give a lot of credit for that tournament success to Chuck Person and that squad of guys.

However you still have to give Smith credit for leading the program to five straight NCAA appearances. Our administration missed one of their best opportunities to help the basketball program after we reached the Elite Eight. I believe starting plans for a new Arena and doing various other little things could have helped the program immeasurably but of course that did not happen.

Smith, like most of our coaches, was an older coach who was on the backside of his career. He was unable to continue the grueling work needed to recruit in basketball at Auburn and the bottom fell out in 1989 with a 2-14 conference record leaving Smith scrambling to Virginia Commonwealth.

Smith’s legacy though is Charles Barkley and Chuck Person and the tournament success Auburn had. It is also about him being a great person overall and his humor and wit. Overall his tenure at Auburn was one of the better runs in Auburn’s less than stellar basketball history.

Tommy Joe Eagles

First and foremost it is still extremely sad that it has been over 15 years since Eagles passed away. I probably know his time at Auburn better than most as I was a student there during that time. Eagles had done a good job at Louisiana Tech. It seemed like a decent hire. His time at Auburn was a lot like Jeff Lebo’s. His teams played very hard but he just could not seem to get any talent especially big men.

Eagles only managed one winning season and a brief NIT appearance at Auburn. There is really not much else to say.

Cliff Ellis

Auburn had the all-time great 1999 season under Cliff Ellis. His part in that must be recognized. However other than that I think he was the most overrated coach in Auburn history. First and foremost he got us on probation twice and that is completely unacceptable to do even once. The four years before 1999 were all losing records in the conference. Ellis always covered that up by scheduling a lot of preseason cupcakes. That is why I judge the success of an Auburn basketball season by the conference record. That tells the truth. It was also why I did not want Ellis to pass Joel Eaves in overall victories because his conference record next to Eaves was not even close.  Ellis went 186-125 overall and 73-87 inconference.

Auburn have everyone coming back but one person in 2000 from the great 1999 team and managed to completely disintegrate and not even win the division after a great start. Things went quickly downhill after that and nothing else good happened other than Ellis recruiting Marquis Daniels and him leading us on that little run his senior year to the Sweet Sixteen. However that Auburn team only had an 8-8 record in conference. Auburn went right back into the tank after that and Jeff Lebo was left with things just as bad as ever.

So all-in-all it appears that 1999 was the exception and not the rule of the Cliff Ellis era. An era produced one great season and three NCAA tournament berths but one that also only had two winning conference records in 10 seasons and two NCAA probations. I guess things ended up on the positive side because we got 1999 out of it but otherwise it was a wash and the program was left in the same shape that it was when Ellis started, if not worse.

Jeff Lebo

I think everyone is in agreement on the Jeff Lebo era. He was a good guy and he got his teams to play hard but he could not recruit many good players especially big men. Lebo got to this past season with nearly nothing to show for two whole recruiting classes. I know all the reasons why it is hard to get good talent to Auburn but you at least have to find a few guys that will stick around.

THE ADMINISTRATION
Here is where the buck stops and the blame ultimately lies. The Auburn administration, leadership and power brokers are to blame for the school having the worst basketball program in the conference since the SEC went to divisions. They absolutely did NOTHING to help the program and did not even do enough to keep the program at a mediocre level. It is just shameful and actually pretty stupid to treat your second biggest revenue producer like this even at a football school.

I think the people who are now giving our AD and administration kudos for the new arena are naïve and wrong. Anyone who thinks this AD and this administration built this new arena for the good of the basketball program is blind. It is obvious that it was going to cost more long term to fix up and maintain Beard Eaves than build the new arena. It is as simple as that. It was a simple financial decision. I mean it would have been for the good of the basketball program if it would have been done about a decade earlier. Instead they waited till Beard Eaves was literally falling down.

There are also numerous other things that could have been done to help the basketball program but they were not done. It was just left out to rot and that is just what it has done till now.

THE FUTURE
Regardless of the reasons now, there is the new Auburn Arena and what appears to be a pretty good coaching hire. Maybe just maybe Auburn basketball can start a new legacy next season. I sure hope so. I also hope the Auburn administration and leadership will now make changes as well and at least give the basketball program decent support from here on out.

Auburn will never be a top basketball school but there is no reason it has to be the worst program in the conference. That is completely unacceptable. I look forward to next season and am actually excited about all aspects of an Auburn basketball team and program for like the first time… ever?