03/11 at 01:22 AM

The numbers are stacked against Auburn and Jeff Lebo heading not only into today’s SEC Tournament, but into the future.

Not one of the six SEC West teams picked up a single victory against the top four teams in the SEC East. That’s 0-for-24, and includes Florida, which Auburn faces at 6:30 p.m. tonight at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn.

Say Auburn upsets the Gators and moves on to play Mississippi State on Friday. The Tigers have only won the SEC Tournament once, in 1985. That was 25 years ago.

When the Tigers won that tournament, they were the first team to ever win four games in four days. Only three teams – Arkansas in 2000, Georgia in 2008 and Mississippi State in 2009 — have repeated the feat.

Auburn hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2003, including all six years under Lebo. That’s the longest drought by any SEC coach, pre-1985, since Ole Miss’ Ed Murphy went the same length of time from 1986-1992 without a trip to the Big Dance.

Murphy never made it to his seventh year.

Those numbers seem to indicate that the logical conclusion to this forgettable season will be the end of Lebo’s tenure, just as the beginning of a new era is set to unfold at the $92.5 million Auburn Arena.

Lebo, as he did Wednesday with reporters in Nashville, has brushed off questions about his tenuous job status, while athletic director Jay Jacobs has declined to comment. Earlier in the season, Jacobs told the Chattanooga Times Free Press it is “certainly the plan” to have Lebo around next season, when Auburn opens up its brand new building.

“I’m focused on this team, and I’m focused on the tournament, focused on Florida,” Lebo said. “That’s where all my energy is going right now, to these kids.

“As in most cases, I think, when the season’s over, I’ll sit down with my AD when the season’s complete, and we’ll have a conversation at that point, but that’s it, that’s kind of where it is right now.”

An exception to the norm
Similar situations to Lebo’s current one with Auburn are tough to find within the SEC, and even major college basketball, because most coaches haven’t lasted as long without making the NCAA Tournament.

Since Lebo was hired in 2004, only three teams — Vanderbilt, Florida and Mississippi State — have gone without a coaching change. Only Ole Miss, which replaced Rod Barnes with Andy Kennedy in 2006, has gone longer without an NCAA Tournament berth, but even the Rebels have made more NIT appearances (two) in the past three years than Auburn (one) has in the past six.

Georgia’s Dennis Felton and Kentucky’s Billy Gillispie were fired one year after making the NCAA Tournament. Mark Gottfried was forced out at Alabama midway through last season, a little more than two years after notching his fifth consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance.

LSU fired John Brady two seasons after he led the Tigers to the Final Four. Arkansas fired Stan Heath after five mediocre seasons, though the Razorbacks made the NCAA Tournament in his final two with the team.

Lebo is 96-92 overall, 35-61 against the SEC in his six years with the Tigers. His .364 winning percentage against the SEC ranks eighth out of the past 11 Auburn coaches. Only two coaches, Joel Eaves and Ralph “Shug” Jordan, finished their Auburn careers with a winning record against conference foes.

Money on his side
Lebo has one big number on his side when he and Jacobs sit down at the end of Auburn’s season — whenever it may be.

If Jacobs opts to fire Lebo, Auburn would owe him a total of $1.5 million over the next three years. Auburn could have owed Lebo more had it exercised the one-year rollover in his contract over the summer, but Jacobs declined to do so, even after the Tigers notched 24 wins, which tied for second-most in program history, and advanced to the NIT quarterfinals.

On top of that, Auburn would then have to find a replacement for Lebo, who currently makes the lowest salary ($785,000 per year) of any coach in the SEC.

On top of potentially paying a buyout to the new coach’s previous school, the going market rate has certainly changed, and it’s assumed that the Tigers wouldn’t keep their new head coach at the bottom of the pay scale.

Of the three new coaches in the SEC this year, Georgia’s Mark Fox makes the least at $1.2 million per year. Alabama’s Anthony Grant makes about $2 million and Kentucky made John Calipari the highest-paid coach in college basketball with an eight-year, $31.65 million contract.

An uncertain future
Auburn isn’t Kentucky, but the Tigers will have to weigh the costs against the benefits of taking a team with the same coach, little momentum and low expectations into the new arena because of an impending dearth of experience.

Though Lebo has the highest-ranked signing class of his time at Auburn arriving in the fall, the Tigers graduate five seniors from this year’s roster. Four of those seniors — Tay Walller, DeWayne Reed, Lucas Hargrove and Brendon Knox — combined to score 79 of Auburn’s 89 points in last week’s win over Mississippi State.

Sophomore Frankie Sullivan, who averages 12.2 points per game, is the lone returning starter. The five other returning players who saw regular action this season have combined to average 11.7 points.

“We’ve had our goods and our bads … but they’ve had their moments,” Lebo said. “There’s been nothing there consistent.”

Two of Auburn’s opponents this season, South Carolina and Virginia, recently opened new buildings. The Gamecocks have been the only SEC team to do so this century, opening the spacious Colonial Life Arena in 2002, while the Cavaliers opened John Paul Jones Arena for the 2006-07 season.

Neither team, like Auburn, came into its new arena with much momentum, but both handled its coaching change one year before its respective new building opened for business.

South Carolina and Eddie Fogler, whom Lebo served as an assistant for before taking his first head coaching job at Tennessee Tech, agreed to “part ways” after the 2000-2001 season, his third consecutive season without an NCAA Tournament appearance. Pete Gillen resigned from Virginia amid speculation that he would be fired after missing the Big Dance for the fourth consecutive season.

Under Dave Leitao, Virginia made the NCAA Tournament in its first year at John Paul Jones Arena, while South Carolina made it one year after Colonial Life Arena’s opening.

Neither team has made the NCAA Tournament since.

A stacked deck
Neither Leitao nor Dave Odom, both of whom have since been fired, had to inherit a program with freshly enforced NCAA probation like Lebo did.

Because of illegal contact made by Cliff Ellis’ staff with prospective players on amateur teams in Huntsville, Lebo, along with a number of other restrictions, lost one scholarship each in 2004-05 and 05-06. Two years later, Auburn, as a whole, came under a dark cloud of negative press after a New York Times story revealed that a number of student-athletes were getting sociology credits without showing up for class.

Lebo’s off-the-court resume, aside from back-to-back subpar Academic Performance Rating scores in 2008 and 2009, has been stellar. The Tigers haven’t sniffed any sort of NCAA trouble and the bulk of Lebo’s players have avoided trouble in the classroom or with the law. The few that have were dealt with strictly.

The circumstances Lebo inherited prompted Auburn to give Lebo an eight-year contract when he arrived at Auburn from Chattanooga. He was promised a new practice facility by his second year, but instead had to settle for a brand new arena seven years later.

It’s anything but certain if he’ll be around to reap the benefits.

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