Coach Leitao Resigns

As most of you know Virginia head basketball coach Dave Leitao resigned yesterday bringing to end his 4 years at the helm of the Cavaliers. Leitao had the shortest tenure of any UVA coach since 1930. He resigned following the worst season for UVA basketball in the last 40 years with the Hoos finishing an abysmal 10-18. The athletic department made a tough but necessary decision to move on and will pay Leitao 2.1 million dollars to buy out the remainder of his contract.

                This makes Virginia the first school to fire their head coach this offseason and gives them quite the leg up on the competition in the search for a new head coach. Craig Littlepage will most likely move quickly in order to prevent

 the confusion that surrounded the hiring of Leitao 4 years ago. This process will most likely take a few weeks as some of the potential candidate’s teams are currently playing in the tournament but I would expect to hear news on the matter shortly after the tournament wraps up April 6^th. I have a few names that I think would be good people to at least bring in and interview for the job. I’ll profile some of them further but here is the list I’ve made with a brief description so far.

 

Anthony Grant, Head Coach- Virginia Commonwealth University

                Anthony Grant has been the up and coming coach for 3 years now after his VCU Rams upset Duke in the first round of the NCAA tournament in 2007. Grant’s star point guard Eric Maynor is graduating this season so this seems to be the logical time to move on. With recruiting connections in Virginia already Grant seems to be the most logical choice to become Virginia’s next basketball coach, the problem is that he is also rumored to be the top candidate for the Georgia and Alabama jobs as well.

Marc Iavaroni, Former Head Coach-Memphis Grizzlies

                Iavaroni played basketball here at UVA and was a graduate assistant on the Final Four teams of the early 80s. If Craig Littlepage feels that he wants to restore the tradition of the basketball program Iavaroni feels like an obvious choice. The question is whether or not Iavaroni, who has never coached in college, feels compelled to return to his alma mater.

Sean Miller, Head Coach-Xavier University

                Miller is another young coach that has led his musketeers to the dance once again. The musketeers have won the A-10 the last 2 years in a row and made the elite 8 last season. Miller would definitely be a good coach if Grant is unavailable.

Jim Larranaga, Head Coach-George Mason University

                This is a bit of a stretch but Jim Larranaga was an assistant at UVA from 1979 to 1986. Larranaga would also be the opposite of Coach Leitao when it came to PR as he is extremely open to the students at George Mason and is a true representation of the school. The one drawback is that Larranaga is 59 years old and UVA might want to look to a younger coach. Plus Larranaga seems to like GMU.

Other names include Oklahoma head coach Jeff Capel, Minnesota coach Tubby Smith, Miami Coach Frank Haith, and GW Coach Karl Hobbs.

If I had to put money on it I’d say the race is between Miller and Grant with Iavaroni as a dark horse. The other coaches are already at good schools or like where they are. I’ll be profiling candidates later this week and into next week.

A Model Program

                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.

Regular Season in Review

                The Virginia Men ended their 2008-2009 regular season with a 68-63 victory on Saturday over the University of Maryland at the John Paul Jones Arena. On senior day Mamadi Diane lead all scorers with 23 points in 34 minutes. It was an appropriate ending and perfectly demonstrated the confusion that has surrounded the entire season. Other bright spots from the game included Mike Scott’s 11 rebounds and 11 points in his 37 minutes, his first extended playing time in quite a while.

                The Cavaliers season has been one of confusion and disappointment. This Sunday was in all likelihood the final game of the season for the Hoos and most questions from the beginning of the year still linger. However amidst all the confusion and lineup changes there is hope for the future. This team has many talented and young players and talent was by no means the reason that the Hoos finished 10-17 this year. In my opinion the reason this team underachieved this season was the coaching. The high school offense, profane bench tirades, and nonsensical substitution patterns were the obvious downfall of the team this season, which is a shame.

                In watching the Cavaliers offensively I genuinely attempted to learn the offense and what the basic strategy and concepts were, and I think I discovered the plan, there was no plan. After about the 3^rd game this season it was apparent that the offense was give Sylven Landesberg the ball and let him use his ball skills to create a play for himself and have the rest of the team clean up after him. I hate to break it to everyone but that stopped working after everyone caught up to the freak 6 foot 5^th grader in rec league and is by no means even close to an effective offensive strategy  for an ACC team. When Virginia went on its season killing 8 game losing streak after the New Year it was because every single team that walked into the gym knew that if they could pack the lane so Sylven could not drive there was no other way Virginia could score.

                 The success at the end of the season was directly correlated to the consistency of the lineup. Coach Leitao finally settled on 7 players that he would give the majority of the minutes. Those seven players developed a repertoire with one another that allowed the offense to have added dimension as the players learned each other’s tendencies. Looking at this team at the beginning of the season I don’t think any of us expected an ACC championship caliber team but I think we all would have been fine seeing the team grow together as they did at the end of the season. I can remember at least 15 different starting lineups this season alone. What the Coach did not seem to grasp was that he needed to pick one and stick with it. You can’t have your starters in for 4 minutes and make a determination on whether or not that lineup will be effective for you for the entire season. Basketball is not a science it’s an art. You can’t just find 5 players that will work every time, but what you can find is 5 players that know when one is having an off night or who has the hot hand and can change their style it account for them. The constant frantic lineup changes that Coach Leitao had this season robbed UVA of any chance of developing that kind of team and having any sort of success this year. We all saw what happened when a lineup was finally settled upon, it’s a shame we could not see it sooner.

                The biggest problem I have with this season is Coach Leitao’s behavior on the sideline. As someone who curses quite frequently I have no grounds to speak on this matter but I have never heard so many profanities thrown in an attack of someone who you are supposed to be mentoring. This is another thing the Coach doesn’t get. He isn’t just the basketball coach. Being the coach of the basketball team makes you not only the face of the team but the face of the entire university. How many of my 4 readers know the name of UVA’s president? I’d be willing to bet the majority of people can’t name our president, but quite a few would recognize our basketball coach. To see a representative of your university drop the f-bomb on Jamil Tucker 9 times in a rant that questions his desire and overall manhood while 5 feet away from fans that bring their 5 year old daughters in their UVA cheerleading outfits is completely out of line and not something that should be allowed to represent this school. The other issue I have is that parent have entrusted their sons to you, and I don’t think they would appreciate seeing their children verbally abused. These guys are not at home, the coach is their authority figure and he should not be allowed to act in such a way that shows that he has no concern for the maturity and development of his players as men, not just as basketball players.  This negative attitude and constant pressure of removal can be plainly seen in the play of Mamadi Diane who exploded for 23 points on Saturday when alleviated of all pressures. Who knows what could have been had he been free his whole career. Diane is a prime example of the detriment of Coach Leitao’s coaching style on his players.

                However after all that negativity the team has a bright future ahead of it. The talent is here and Tristan Spurlock is an excellent swing man coming in from Springfield, VA. I feel that this team can be great in the coming years but a coaching change has to be made. It has to be for no other reason than Coach Leitao is not a good representative of this university, but also because coaching seems to be the main problem with this team. The team has the talent, the fanbase, and the facilities to be great; the only thing missing is a great coach.

 

                I’ll be profiling a few guys a think would be a good fit for coaches if Coach Leitao is indeed fired but it would be in poor taste to speak of replacements before a decision is reached. For the rest of the week you can look forward to more profiles of the future of the basketball team and maybe some football by the end of the week. I will address the controversial Washington Post Article in tomorrow’s entry.

 

Wahoowa

Wahoos Roll at JPJ

Virginia 75    Virginia Tech 61

                 The UVA men’s basketball team had an extremely impressive performance against the hokies last night at the John Paul Jones arena. Led by Sylven Landesberg’s 19 points and 9 rebounds the Cavaliers showed that last Sunday’s win over Clemson was no fluke and hinted that good things may be to come. In addition to Landesberg, Jamil Tucker added 13 points off the bench and Calvin Baker had 10.

What was the most impressive thing however was Coach Leitao’s willingness to stick with the lineup on the floor that he has exhibited over the last 3 games. I don’t know where the man who would yank Solomon Tat after 45 seconds for dribbling the ball off of his foot but I like this new coach. Without the pressure of being taken out players like Jeff Jones have really started to blossom and thrive in the offense and the team is playing better as a whole. At one point Jones, who scored 8 points in 26 minutes and was 40% from 3-point range, made an incredible reverse lay-up. This was the kind of play and aggressiveness that was just not there earlier in the season. The team is now more relaxed when they play and is more willing to take risks and allow plays like that to happen because they no longer fear getting the hook if they screw up.

This mentality also extends to the defensive end of the court. You can say all you want about Jeff Allen being suspended but Assane Sene was a beast in the paint last night. The stat line doesn’t show anything too impressive, 4 points, 4 boards, and 2 blocks, but Sene’s mere presence helped stifle the attack of Virginia Tech. Sene’s presence in the lane as a shot blocker allows the cavalier’s perimeter defenders to be more aggressive in attacking the ball because there are no easy shots with the 7 foot shot blocker in the middle of the lane. This more aggressive defense allowed the Cavaliers to push the tempo of the game all night long to the point where the less athletic Hokies just could not keep up anymore.

I thought the Hoos looked best with Zeglinski at point, Jones at the 2, Landesberg at the 3, Scott at the 4, and Sene in the middle. This lineup is extremely talented but more importantly, extremely young. Seeing this team excel to the level it did last night gives me incredible optimism for the future of UVA basketball. This has been driving me nuts all year but Leitao seems to have finally settled, or resigned to, this younger developing lineup. This collection of 2 freshman and 3 sophmores could easilybe the starting 5 for the next 2 seasons and probably should have been all of this season. This group plays fast, exciting, and aggressive basketball lead by the dynamic scoring ability of Sylven Landesberg, who has emerged as the teams go to player even as a freshman. With big bodies like Scott and Sene to clean up the boards, Zeglinski to distribute and Jones to alleviate some of the defensive pressure on the inside with his ability to hit the three this team has all the pieces in place to be not just a good, but I believe a great ACC team in the future. Even their bench is strong. Jamil Tucker consistently provides a spark off the bench and Mustapha Farrakahn has shown flashes of brilliance. The core players of the UVA basketball team are young and talented and last night’s game showed that and also made me extremely excited for the future, and I hope everyone else is too.