Congratulations to the Duke Blue Devils on winning the ACC Championship over the Florida State Seminoles this weekend. Duke looked much more stout defensively than I expected and played extremely well in the tournament and I think might be a threat in the big dance this year.
Today I’d like to write about Florida State though. Who’d’ve thought that we’d be talking about Florida State in the ACC BASKETBALL championship. For a school so famous for football the FSU men’s basketball team is probably the best team they have on campus right now. It’s nice to see former Washington Wizards coach Leonard Hamilton have success, especially with superior talent to the bag a garbage the wizards gave him to work with. Hamilton has built that program from relative obscurity to the top of the ACC in only 7 seasons. For people who do not follow the ACC this may come as a surprise to see the ‘noles doing so well but if you’ve been paying attention the last few seasons you’ve noticed that the team has improved every season. FSU is built around defense and solid guard play, focusing mainly on team leader Toney Douglas, who I think should have been player of the year. Even though I hate Florida State football it’s nice to see that all the hard work coach Hamilton and the rest of the FSU team has put in is finally paying off.
Now let’s compare this to UVA, seeing as how this is the WahooWatch. While Florida State was climbing to the top of the ACC UVA has been plummeting to the bottom. Following the regular season championship in 2007 the team’s record has dropped to 17-16 in 2007-2008 and 10-18 in 2008-2009. All comments about Coach Leitao aside this is a bad sign. Granted it’s not necessarily bad that UVA is no longer on top of the ACC but to go 10-18 only 2 years removed from being regular season champs is. The other factor is the departure of the last of former coach Pete Gillen’s players, which coincides with the drop off in victories. Most coaches struggle initially as they recruit players that fit their style of play. With coach Leitao it seems to have gone oppositely. In fact one could argue that players like Sean Singletary and J.R. Reynolds helped the team win despite Coach Leitao. As Leitao’s players moved up through the system you could see UVA’s production begin to decline. Without a dynamic personality like Sean Singletary this season the Wahoos were completely under the control of the head coach as their emotional leader. With the team playing as poorly as it did this season it speaks directly to the coaching staff’s inability to properly motivate and instruct the players in order to put them in the position to succeed. Coach Leitao cannot claim, which he has, that UVA is hard to recruit to. Yes the academics are hard here but you have a brand spanking new stadium, winning tradition, and diehard fans who are dying to have a winning team here again. I think you need to look to Leonard Hamilton and FSU to see what the model should be. Hamilton has completely turned that basketball program around and he has nowhere close to the facilities, fan base, or tradition that Virginia has. Coach Leitao has squandered what this University has to offer during his tenure here. This team should absolutely not be as bad as it is. You can say all you want about his coach style and his mannerisms, which do not help him in this case at all, but you cannot avoid the fact that once his players who he coached came through the system the team went downhill. It’s just like Miami and Larry Coker a few years ago, once Butch Davis’s players left the team struggled. UVA needs to bring in a new coach before the team sinks too far into obscurity for any coach to dig it out of.
For the rest of this week look forward to a potential coach profiles if Leitao is out, otherwise I’m going to look ahead to UVA players in the NFL Draft and the new football coaches, as well as my last profile for the future basketball team.
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