Auburn's Jeff Lebo joined the other 11 Southeastern Conference head basketball coaches in taking questions from reporters on Monday. Following is what he had to say:
ON NEXT SEASON: "We lost three very good players who started for us for pretty much their entire career. So we have some work to do there making up for those three guys. Our guys are working hard this summer. They got a little taste of success last year, and I know they are wanting to build upon what we did last year this year.”
ON POSSIBILITY OF SALARY CAP: “If they’re capping everything else, if they’re capping all the other jobs, I guess you can cap basketball. They capped my salary already when I was a coach. I was a restricted earnings coach for three years. So, I’ve already felt the experience of getting my salary capped. I think it was capped at $12,000. I was an assistant at Vanderbilt for one year making $12,000 and then two years at South Carolina making $12,000 a year, called a restricted earnings coach which, at that time, we sued and actually won.
"Do I think coaches make too much money? Absolutely, I do. But, we also have no stability in our jobs, either. I don’t know how you could go about capping it. I think they’ve experimented with that before because I felt that cap for three years.”
ON KORVOTNEY BARBER'S PLANS: "I think he’s going to be out in L.A. He’s going to be working out. I just saw him a few days ago. So, he’ll be out there waiting. Right now everybody is preparing summer league teams and seeing what they are going to be doing working out wise in the summertime. So, I think a lot of that will be determined here in the next few months.”
ON NEW ASSISTANT KEN POTOSNAK: "I’ve known Kenny for a long time. We’re excited to have him replace John Cooper, who took the head coaching job at Tennessee State. Kenny is a longtime vet, 20 years coaching at The Citadel, then an assistant at Furman, then at the University of South Carolina. Kenny can do a little bit of everything. He’ll have a lot of responsibility on our staff, not only recruiting wise, but coaching on the court, scouting, working with our big guys. So, we’re real excited about having him join our program.
"I think he’ll bring a lot of fresh ideas. t’s always exciting to have someone new come on staff that may have some different ideas on different things.”
