Question the process, but don't question the result. Virginia swung for the fences and missed, but by hiring Dave Leitao the Cavaliers still wound up with a home run.
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| Virginia paid big money to lure coach Dave Leitao away from DePaul. (Getty Images) |
Virginia took a circuitous path to Leitao, which reflects more on Virginia than Leitao, who was good enough to have been the top choice. The casual fan would have gasped if Virginia had fired Gillen one day and hired Leitao the next -- Dave Leitao? Why didn't we hire Tubby Smith? Mike Krzyzewski? John Wooden? -- but hard-core college basketball people understand how good Leitao promises to be for Virginia.
He promises to be so good, in fact, that he better not promise to be there for long. A handful of years from now, when Leitao has Virginia on the 20-win treadmill and Jim Calhoun retires from Connecticut, UConn will pry Leitao away from Virginia as easily as Virginia pried Leitao away from DePaul. It's the circle of life. Virginia is above DePaul on the food chain, but UConn is above Virginia. Way, way above Virginia.
Virginia is not the basketball school it confused itself for while pursuing Smith, Barnes and Mike Montgomery. Leitao will get the ball rolling in that direction, but for now he inherits a program that rode Ralph Sampson into a skewed level of national prominence.
Virginia has 15 NCAA Tournament appearances, less than 52 programs, and has made two Final Four appearances -- which puts it in a 23-way tie for 30th place nationally.
Those facts say Virginia is not a top-30 college basketball program, yet it's a top-30 job for two reasons: ACC and cash (and you're right -- they're one and the same). You can argue the Big East has a better product on the court, but off the court the two leagues don't compare. Only in the ACC would a program as mediocre as Virginia hire a coach as (so far) unaccomplished as Leitao and pay him almost $1 million a year. Money is status, and no basketball league throws around money like the ACC.
With the kind of money it's throwing around this year, Virginia might soon need rotator cuff surgery. Including Gillen's payoff, Leitao's buyout from DePaul and his 2005-06 salary at Virginia, the school has almost $5 million invested in Leitao's first season. But that's nothing compared to the $130 million the school is (still) raising for the John Paul Jones Arena, a 15,000-seat palace that will be one of the country's finest gyms when it opens in 2006-07.
Leitao was worth it. For one thing, he can X-and-O. If you want to argue, don't. DePaul went 21-37 in Pat Kennedy's last two seasons ... and Leitao went 58-34 in the next three, and did it without his best two signees: Wesley Green, who redshirted the 2003-04 season with an injury; and Dorell Wright, who entered the 2004 NBA Draft out of high school.
Leitao will land players Gillen could think about getting only when he had Bobby Gonzalez as his chief recruiter. At DePaul, Leitao signed three straight top-35 classes for a Conference USA school that played in a deteriorating, half-filled gym located 30 minutes from campus ... in an indifferent city.
Now Leitao's in the ACC, in a town -- and state -- dominated by the Cavaliers. Throw in the John Paul Jones Arena and the regal figure Leitao's going to cut on national television opposite Roy Williams and Krzyzewski, and Virginia's in for a talent makeover.
Congratulations are in order for Virginia, but let's take the blinders off and see this process for what it was. Virginia marginalized Leitao by waiting nearly five weeks, and exploring at least five other candidates, before offering him the job.
Along the way, the collateral damage included Dave Odom's shattered name at South Carolina. Odom, a former Virginia assistant alongside now-athletics director Craig Littlepage, was unfairly dragged into the process as a consultant or resource or whatever euphemism you prefer for "fallback candidate." Odom's recruiting suffered, as did his status among USC fans offended that he might prefer Virginia to their fine school.
Virginia has trampled over others before. It's the same school that humiliated Syracuse during ACC expansion two years ago. Politically pressured by state leaders, Virginia hijacked the proceedings until Virginia Tech was thrown into the ACC mix. Someone had to be thrown out, and that someone was Syracuse, which slunk back to the Big East.
Syracuse recovered -- its athletics director resigned, and the new AD fired the football coach -- but Syracuse recovered. Odom will recover. So will DePaul, assuming the school's next hire is a slam dunk (Gonzalez, Brian Gregory) instead of a risk (Rick Majerus, Tim O'Shea) or an outright disaster (Digger Phelps).
DePaul is a story for another day. Today the story is Leitao, the first black head coach in Virginia history. Welcome to the 20th century, Cavaliers. What took you so long?
