Pretty ingenious of Auburn to hire a basketball coach under the smoke screen of spring football practice beginning. I'll be honest: it blindsided me a little. I didn't think things would wrap up that quickly.

As a result, yesterday was packed full of news. Here's everything you might have missed:

• Auburn's 12-day search to replace Jeff Lebo ended when the Tigers hired Tony Barbee of UTEP. Read the full story here.

• Junior college transfer Cam Newton, the presumed frontrunner in Auburn's quarterback race, spoke to the assembled media for the first time since enrolling in January. Here's that full story.

• If you want to get a sense of what Newton is like, check out this video of the highlights of Wednesday's interview. He is definitely an engaging subject.

• Or if you'd like, you can see him in some brief on-field action in this video shot from practice Wednesday.

• That reminds us, apparently yesterday was the first day of spring football practice. Find out who's off the roster and who will re-evaluated the situation at the end of the semester by clicking here.

• There was so much excess football info that it spilled over into a blog post. Read about those odds and ends by clicking here.

• The Auburn baseball team kept on rolling with an 8-6 win against Alabama in Montgomery in the Capital City Classic. That's seven straight wins for the Tigers.

• And lastly, the men's swimming and diving team will have to wait another day to defend its national title. The 2010 National Championships at Ohio State have been delayed a day because 18 swimmers and one coach were treated for possible gastrointestinal illness. No Auburn athletes were affected. Yup, might want to get that cleared up before anybody gets in a pool.

And while we're blogging a bunch of links, click here to follow the blog on Twitter. Yesterday was a good day for Twitter followers. Let's keep that train a-rollin'.

The blog will be back this evening for Barbee's introductory press conference, so check back later.