Central Michigan to hire Tony Barbee as next men's basketball coach
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Central Michigan has found its next men's basketball coach, finding an experienced man with ties to college hoops royalty.
The Chippewas will announce the hiring of Tony Barbee as head coach on Friday, a source confirmed to the Free Press on Thursday.
Barbee, 49, has spent the last seven seasons as an assistant at Kentucky under John Calipari, for whom Barbee played for at UMass and coached under at Memphis from 2000-2006.
He spent this past season as the associate head coach at Kentucky and has been especially focused on defense during his time in Lexington.
Before his time at Kentucky, Barbee was the head coach at UTEP (2006-10) and Auburn (2010-14). Barbee helped UTEP win the Conference USA regular season title and an NCAA tournament appearance in 2010 and had an 82-52 (.612 winning percentage) record there.
His time at Auburn didn't go as smoothly, going just 49-75 (.395) over four seasons.
Among the players he coached at Kentucky include: Karl-Anthony Towns, Devin Booker, Jamal Murray, Bam Adebayo, current Pistons guard Hamidou Diallo and Tyler Herro.
CMU fired Keno Davis after nine seasons earlier this month and announced a that search firm DHR International would help with finding a replacement.
Contact Kirkland Crawford: kcrawford@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @HiKirkHere.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Central Michigan to hire Tony Barbee as next men's basketball coach
