Mike Szvetitz | A View From The Lazy Boy

03/26 at 12:29 AM

Not even 5 minutes off the plane Thursday afternoon, right there in the pilot’s lounge of the Auburn-Opelika Robert G. Pitts Airport, next to two half-day-old pots of coffee, Tony Barbee’s attention went right to his players.

Not even 5 minutes into his interview with Jay Jacobs two days earlier, Barbee’s attention went right to his players.

Not even 5 seconds after Auburn announced his hiring Wednesday night, everyone’s attention went to his players — the ones he has now, and more importantly, the ones he’s going to get.

See, Barbee’s a great recruiter. Auburn needs great recruits.

From everything we’ve heard and read, Barbee’s one of the best in college basketball. After all, he learned from perhaps “the best” in John Calipari — as a player for him at UMass and as an assistant on Calipari’s Memphis staff.

And now the student will compete head-to-head with the teacher in the SEC. The teacher, however, is playing with a stacked deck at tradition- and talent-rich Kentucky, while the student has the deck stacked against him, facing a steep rebuilding project.

But he wouldn’t want it any other way.

“There’s one way to get to the top,” Barbee said after his introductory press conference at the new Auburn Arena on Thursday evening. “And that’s to go after the people who are at the top.”

“(Calipari) knows one thing about me, and that’s I’m a competitive you-know-what … It was my challenge at UTEP to go after Coach Cal — on the court, in recruiting and everything we do as a program,” Barbee said minutes before while addressing the crowd. “And if we were able to catch him, that would put us at the top of the league. And we did.

“That’s my same philosophy here: We’re going right after Kentucky, we’re going right after Coach Calipari.”

That statement was followed by the loudest cheer the Auburn Arena will hear until it opens next season.

Barbee said he’s going to do it by going after the same players, in the same backyard as Coach Cal, just like he did in Conference USA.

We all know that recruiting is the lifeblood of college athletics. And that’s especially true in college basketball, where just one “great one” can mean the difference between the NCAA Tournament, the CBI or nowhere — a place Auburn knows well.

Barbee is here to change that. To prove that you can have a successful basketball program at a “football school.”

“Why can’t you?” he said. “Why can’t you?

“It’s been done before, why can’t it be done again? That’s why I’m here.”

That’s why Jacobs hired him.

“We are going to go after and we are going to attract the best players in the country — the best — that fit with me, that fit with Auburn University, that fit with the Auburn family and what it stands for,” Barbee said. “We’re not going to be afraid to go after the best players in the state of Alabama … the Southeast region … anywhere in the country. I promise you that.”

He also promised not to stop with high school and junior college players. He’s coming after you … and me.

“We’re going to be recruiting the media for exposure … the community for support and I’m going to be recruiting the students, because my responsibly is to rekindle that love affair between the Auburn community — the Auburn family — and this storied basketball program. That is my challenge, and I accept it wholeheartedly.”

So get ready for a full-court press like no other — on and off the court. Let’s just hope he doesn’t make us run suicides.

Whatever he does decide to do, Barbee says it’ll be all in the name of building the program. The same one that has seen much better days. The same program that needs this shot in the arm so desperately.

That’s why Jacobs hired him.

Barbee is happy to oblige. He knows what it’s going to take — players and excitement.

And he’s ready to hit the recruiting trail on both.

MIKE SZVETITZ is sports editor of the Opelika-Auburn News. He may be reached at 737-2513.