Was 1999 Really That Long Ago?

     After watching the debacle live from Nashville this past Saturday, it seemed like much longer than 13 years since Auburn beat Vanderbilt in Beard-Eaves Memorial Coliseum to win the SEC regular season championship and capture a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Just what has transpired in the last 13 years?

Cliff Ellis led Auburn to the 1998-99 SEC title.

      A better question might be, where do you start? Five years removed from that amazing season, Auburn Coach Cliff Ellis was fired, amidst controversy. The Tigers had struggled to a 14-14 finish (5-11 in the SEC) in 2003-04 but were one year removed from a Sweet 16 appearance, where they lost to eventual national champion Syracuse and Carmelo Anthony by one point.

       Ellis was 186-125 at Auburn. Modest numbers, yes. But he had built something. And there is little doubt that the Tigers were going to be much better in 2004-2005 with the bulk of the team returning. Upon Ellis’s annual meeting with then President Ed Richardson, he was told before he could even sit down “Cliff, you’re not coming back.” Most will agree that Ellis’s dismissal had little to do with wins and losses but much more to do with an NCAA investigation, that was anything but on the up and up.

      AAU Basketball had really taken the basketball recruiting world by storm in the mid-90’s and early 2000’s. Ellis had Auburn right in the mix. Auburn recruited heavily from Mark Komara, director of Southeast Elite, and a former shooting guard at Alabama-Huntsville. Komara was a big time player in the AAU world and was tight with Sonny Vaccaro, the controversial sports marketing executive, who signed Michael Jordan to Nike.

      The NCAA wanted Vaccaro, not Auburn. After the NCAA went after Vaccaro and came up with egg on their face, their attention turned to Ellis and the Tiger program and Komara, whose relationship with Vaccaro was well known on the AAU circuit. Auburn was the convenient fall guy. The new kid on the block. The claim was that Auburn had given large sums of money and expensive cars to recruits Jackie Butler and Chad Moore of Huntsville. That could not be proven and Auburn assistant, Shannon Weaver who was the target of much of these claims, was completely exonerated. So what did the NCAA find?

      They allege that Komara acted as a representative of Auburn in the recruitment of Butler and Moore. Komara was the first AAU basketball coach ever deemed a representative of a university. Auburn was then barred from recruiting Komara’s players. “Taking away recruiting from Komara is like taking away 70 percent of the high schools in Alabama away from football,” a former Auburn basketball staff member told The Bagel.

      “Cliff took it as far as he could take it at Auburn. He had to ruffle feathers to get it done,” he continued. “Once the administration was pissed off, that was it. It wasn’t going to end pretty and the Komara (expletive) was all the ammo they needed.”

Jeff Lebo never could get Auburn going.

      Enter Jeff Lebo. Lebo, a former star at North Carolina, came to Auburn from Chattanooga with high praises from the likes of hall of Fame coaches Dean Smith and Roy Williams. Though not Auburn’s first target, it appeared Lebo had the pedigree. However, after numerous transfers and six seasons with only one NIT to show for it, Lebo was shown the door, as Auburn was ready to usher in a new arena.

      Lebo did things the right way. He was known as straight laced and would not lend his name to anything remotely shady. Almost immediately, fans (and there are not many Auburn basketball fans) took a dislike to Lebo. He was deemed as not an “Auburn man.” While Lebo did not recruit well and did not turn out many wins, his teams competed.
     Auburn’s administration, though many to not want to hear it, did not help Lebo either. Besides the Komara ban, they prostituted the basketball program in 2005 when they signed a contract with Under Armour, an upstart apparel company based out of Baltimore, MD. The multi-million dollar contract, was a boost for football, but it left basketball out in the cold. When Auburn initially signed with Under Armour, there was not one AAU team affiliated with Under Armour. Lebo had to take what he could get and the results showed on the court.
     AAU basketball is linked to shoe companies. At least the good ones are. And the heavy hitters are Nike and Adidas. The novice fan would tell you, “Shoes don’t matter.” So, I took a list of the Top 100 players to see how many players' AAU shoe affiliation matched the college they signed with. Here are the results:

-71% of the Top 100

-84% of the Top 25

-78% 0f the Top 50

*Three players played for independent AAU teams.

*Some players played on multiple AAU teams but I matched them with the most influential.

      Enter Tony Barbee. As the new era was ushered in, fans were excited. Barbee came to Auburn from Texas –El Paso (UTEP) with the credentials to match. A John Calipari disciple, Barbee had played for Calipari at UMass, and coached for him at both UMass and Memphis, with a stint at Wyoming in between.
       Barbee’s magnetic personality was a breath of fresh air to the throngs of fans, who were tired of Lebo and tired of losing. He hit the ground running and immediately signed Josh Langford, the state’s #1 ranked player and a product of Lee High School in Huntsville. But more interestingly was Barbee’s other initial signee, Luke Cothron, who was finishing up prep school in North Carolina but whose AAU affiliation was none other than Mark Komara.
      The irony in this was that in a February 19, 2010 article by Kevin Scarbinsky of the Birmingham News, Auburn Associate AD and Compliance Director when asked if then coach Jeff Lebo could recruit through Komara, was quoted as saying “"Because of previous NCAA issues, we cannot comment."

Tony Barbee is trying to turn Auburn into a contender.

     Cothron was never admitted to Auburn and fans were left scratching their heads as to what was going on. I asked a basketball support staff member in the summer of 2010 about recruiting through Komara. His response was “That’s over and done. We need to move on and find new avenues. The administration will never let that happen.”
      What becomes more interesting is what went on in the following months upon Barbee’s arrival and upon Cothron’s denial into the university. Komara’s son Anthony became a walk-on with the basketball team. However, it only lasted a few weeks. The Auburn administration informed the basketball program that young Komara could not be part of the program, and he was asked to leave immediately.
      An associate of Komara’s , who is also an Auburn graduate and long time Auburn basketball supporter told me, on conditions of anonymity that Barbee was not leveled with on the up and up when he was hired at Auburn. This includes a new deal with Under Armour, which was ironically secretly signed before Lebo was fired, as well as the Komara situation. 
     One of Barbee’s first stops when he came to The Plains ,if not the first was in Huntsville, to see Komara. “Barbee had a two year plan. It could have easily been different last year and this year and especially next year if the AD and the Compliance folks had even half-way co-operated with Barbee during his first year. No more,” the gentleman said.
     Barbee’s first season came and went. Other than the new arena and an appearance by the Harlem Globetrotters at the grand opening, there was little to get excited about. Auburn limped to an 11-20 season but did manage to win four SEC games and score a huge upset over eventual Sweet 16 team Florida State. So suffice it to say, entering this season optimism wasn’t high.

     That seemed to have turned though as Auburn won its first four games, albeit against less than stellar competition in McNeese State, Kennesaw State, Nicholls State, and Arkansas-Pine Bluff. An 81-59 loss at Seton Hall dampened the few fiery spirits and there has been little to get excited about since, as Auburn is 10-5, with four of those losses being by plus 20.
     Auburn hosts Kentucky Wednesday night, fresh off that 65-35 debacle at Vanderbilt. Is it just me, or does 1999 seems like 1959?