How to judge Leitao next season?
June 22nd, 2008 by Mahini
Ben believes that it’s time to really put Dave Leitao under the microscope.
Next season, the training wheels are off.
When Dave Leitao started at Virginia, he knew he had a solid backcourt—Sean Singletary and J.R. Reynolds, both of whom were recruited by his predecessor—to anchor the team.
With their graduations, the team comes completely under Leitao’s direction. These are his players. This upcoming season is a preview of what Leitao’s Virginia program will look like for years to come…if Leitao is around long enough.
Allaire is reasonable optimistic about next season (even calling down the power of the Ewing Theory). That’s fine and all, but let’s get back to the original premise: Is it fair to drop the hammer of judgment on coach if the team hits its mediocre expectations?
On the one hand is Ben’s point: after three season and now with most of the team of his own choosing, perhaps Leitao should be under his first year of significant scrutiny next season. However, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s still early. Yes, it’s the fourth year of the Leitao era. And we should be expecting some sort of consistent positive movement from the program by now — newness starts to fade as an excuse at this point. But his squad will still have two Gillen-picked starters: Lars and Diane. And most of the players recruited by Leitao were either first or second years last season. While that means a few are about to be third-years and should be developing into ACC caliber competitors, most of the Leitao-picked players are still pretty green.
Now, this isn’t meant to denigrate Gillen’s recruits. Hell, Leitao’s two best players over the past couple seasons — the “training wheels” of J.R. and Singletary — were Gillen recruits. And Lars saved the team in the back half last year, and Diane certainly could let his talent override his inconsistency in his senior season. All I’m saying is that there are still reasons to reserve final judgment about Dave Leitao’s tenure at Virginia, and the biggest one is that he’s yet to have all of his pieces in place.
