I caught the Barbee interview and he was all class. I for one am proud to have him out in the college basketball world as former coach and representative of our great university. Steve did great job as usual. Some of the stories shared were really good and he said more than once how much he and his family loved El Paso and still have close friends here. All in all it was a big surprise to hear from him and it was really enjoyable. Thanks Steve great job!
Tony Barbee Interview
- Thread starter Jimmy the Miner
- Start date
I know it’s never going to happen but I wish he would be our coach again. His style of basketball was exciting to watch and he would make UTEP a top CUSA team in a short amount of time.
He was ahead of the curve with his style of play, which actually drove some posters crazy, they would call it disorganized and other things.
Now we see the Floyd/Johnson teams and we can see how overcoached they are. There's no spontaneity there. Or fun. The sets are so rigid.
The Barbee years were the last time I had fun as a UTEP fan.
Now we see the Floyd/Johnson teams and we can see how overcoached they are. There's no spontaneity there. Or fun. The sets are so rigid.
The Barbee years were the last time I had fun as a UTEP fan.
Awesome recruiter but he was out coached by the other teams coach when he had to win an important game
He improved his win total every year. Every recruit showed up. He built a conference championship team in four years with a perennial top ten team in the the conference. He had a fifteen game conference winning streak. Every coach occasionally gets outcoached. Barbee got outcoached occasionally but those occasions were very rare. People were irritated because he didn't play 50's style basketball. He didn't go into four corners or run the shot clock down. He recruited players that were better than the other schools players and he ran their ass out of the gym. His team's played with swag and excitement. There is no more National power in C-USA. It would only take Barbee two years to build a team that would rip through weak ass low major cusa 2.0.
Dang! That is the most impassioned I have ever seen you get about Miner bb. And I might have to agree with you.
Barbee was an up and coming assistant out of then powerhouse Memphis, and he had fresh ties to Memphis and Calipari. I think this helped him recruit some good kids out of Memphis.
Im not so sure he has that same ability to recruit good talent from those areas. If he did, he would have performed better at auburn.
Idk. I just don't see barbee repeating prior success here...
Im not so sure he has that same ability to recruit good talent from those areas. If he did, he would have performed better at auburn.
Idk. I just don't see barbee repeating prior success here...
I said about the same thing the other day and posed that very question about whether or not he could still recruit likehe did after his stint at Memphis.
He is, however, a retread I'd give it a go with.
He won that important UAB game to win the CUSA regular season title.
Barbee recruited/coached well enough to win in CUSA. Just like Billy G did a good enough job to win in The WAC, and not at Kentucky. Same with Sadler, could win in The WAC and not at Nebraska. Maybe their styles were good enough to win in a smaller conference.
No point in taking a side in the “Hire Barbee/Dont hire Barbee” argument. He’s riding the hype train that is Kentucky BB and there’s probably so much job security right now. Plus maybe if he’s loyal and does a great job behind the scenes he sees himself as having a legitimate chance to succeed Coach K.
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Idk if Senter would prefer going with his own people, but if he wants back Barbee should definitely get a look. I'm just excited to start fresh this team is gonna struggle apparently to have double digits wins. I didn't even know they lost last night til this board, I simply could care less this year now
Many of his players at Auburn quit or were, I believe, kicked off the team. The curse is real; kids these days are snowflakes.
Not true at all because these type of things don't happen at all schools.
The only snowflakes are the people who can't handle reading other people's opinions.
I was told recently that Barbee wanted to stay at UTEP and asked Stull for 50k more. Stull refused, so Barbee had to follow the money. I don't blame him a bit.
Stull would rather pay Floyd double then pay Barbee 50k more? That doesn't make any sense.
Well if that were true, it was the dumbest thing Stull could have done. We had a top 25 team returning that would have kept Moultrie and added McCulley, Bohannon and Eric Moreland. That front line would have been plenty to build on the following year as well.
Over time, and as of recent especially, it's really come to light how many dumb things Stull did/didn't do. It wouldn't surprise me if this really is true.
UTEP fans just had a hard time with Coach Cal offense Barbee ran. There may be a Randy Culpepper Avenue in a new subdivision in far east El Paso; however, ten to twelve years earlier was a totally different story with most fans wondering why Barbee played him.
My point is Barbee didn't want to stay, IMO. It was kind of obvious. He got called out for his failure for fan outreach, his somewhat unwillingness to explain Calipari offense to fans who were not familiar with it and just plain stand off'ish at times if you want to get right down to it. But, Barbee was driven and to me a classic Post modern day "Tom Sawyer" made famous by Rush in the 80's. The "space he invaded" here in El Paso was built for success, the Barbee way! Not Haskins, not Stull, not BG....his only. There were I witness reports at time of his annoyance when Haskins was brought up constantly. Can't really blame him. Haskins was the past, Barbee is a 21st century head coach. Auburn social hierarchy and culture is built around football, and at UTEP it's the opposite. Well, at least at that time (now it's fallen apart). Barbee got his money, but was in the wrong program.
All I know is that when Barbee was at UTEP, he didn't have these troubles with players leaving, but when he was at Auburn, he started having these problems at the exact same time that they were plaguing Floyd. From Wikipedia (link):
"The Barbee era at Auburn was fraught with off the court issues. Following the 2011–12 season, Auburn point guard Varez Ward was arrested on charges of point shaving. Of the 21 players that Barbee signed while at Auburn, only 9 remained on his roster in his 4th season due to player dismissals and transfers."
Many of the top programs, like Kentucky where Barbee is now, thrive with one-and-done players who split for the NBA, so at these top programs the players are leaving after a year by design. However, we apparently now have scores of players at lesser programs who think they're one-and-done material and then split for the pros and don't get drafted. This one-and-done culture is destroying the college basketball game and I think is doing a disservice to those players who aren't quite good enough.
But the plague is real. I don't think it's a coincidence that UTEP and Auburn were infected at the same time.
Stull wanted Floyd. Mary wanted Floyd. They knew they could get Floyd.
Barbee was good as gone...
I believe it
Barbee was good as gone...
I believe it
I am not so sure about this one. Some rumors had Dickey all but announced as our next coach. More rumors said BG said give him 500K and he’d be on the next flight out. That was enough leverage to get Floyd to commit. From what I understood, Floyd was not a sure thing.
Culpepper was one of the most popular Miner players when he played here. He always killed NMSU. I attended nearly all of the home games during the Barbee era and never heard 1 fan complain about why Barbee was playing him.
I (and others) would get frustrated with Randy's shot selection his first year or two, but the talent was obvious and he deserved the PT.
I didn't follow recruiting back then but it was obvious to me that as a borderline 3-star player he was way underrated. He could have played and staryed on most teams in the country. The kid was fearless, confident and would dunk with any glimpse of the rim. I never once thought he was shooting too much. I mean he only paired with UTEP's leader scorer ever. There were plenty of shots to go around.
