Leitao Out at Virginia

Dave Leitao has resigned his position as the head coach of the University of Virginia men's basketball team. Sources say it was a forced resignation.

Virginia finished the 2008-09 basketball season with a 10-18 overall record and was just 4-12 against Atlantic Coast Conference opponents. The Cavaliers placed 11th in the 12 member league.

Leitao arrived at Virginia in 2005 after three seasons as the head coach at DePaul. Prior to his stay at DePaul, he was Jim Calhoun's top assistant at Connecticut.

Under Leitao, Virginia participated in three postseason tournaments, including the 2007 NCAA Tournament. What's more, the Cavaliers' strong showing in '07 -- U.Va earned a share of the regular-season conference title -- resulted in Leitao being named the 2006-07 ACC Coach of the Year.

But despite his early success in Charlottesville, Leitao had trouble recruiting. The University of Virginia is an outstanding school with a beautiful, historic campus. And it has top-notch basketball facilities. But in the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Cavaliers have to compete against basketball powers like North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, Maryland. And they have trouble keeping the best players from Virginia in state, as the traditional ACC power programs and Georgetown usually raid Washington, D.C. and Virginia of its best basketball talent.

Despite it's many strengths (at least on paper), the Virginia men's basketball program remains something of an enigma. In theory, there's no reason why U.Va shouldn't be able to consistently finish in the top five of the ACC. After all, if a football school like Clemson can become a player in ACC hoops, certainly Virginia, with its outstanding facilities and strong basketball tradition, can reassert itself as one too.

But for some reason, a sustained return to basketball prominence just hasn't been in the cards
for Virginia.

Pete Gillen was one of the hottest college basketball coaches in America when he took the Virginia job. But he washed out a few years later. Dave Leitao was also highly regarded when he arrived to replace Gillen. After all, Leitao had taken DePaul to the NCAA Tournament after the program lay in ruins following the end of the Pat Kennedy era. He was a young, polished, black head coach who carried himself with a quiet confidence and an unwavering cool. But after four years as Virginia's head coach, Leitao leaves Charlottesville with a head full of grey hair and the appearance of a much older man. His formerly cool demeanor has been replaced with a perpetually stressed-out look that underscores the difficulties he's encountered while helming the Virginia basketball program.

Understandably, the University of Virginia wants to replace Dave Leitao with a coach who can resurrect the Cavalier basketball program and generate excitement among Virginia fans and alumni. Virginia will likely spend big money to lure a hot, up and coming coach to Charlottesville. But Pete Gillen and Leitao were once hot, up and coming coaches who appeared to possess the qualities that would allow them to rebuild the once-proud Virginia basketball program.

Why Virginia has been unable to field a consistently competitive basketball program remains somewhat unclear. Why an in-demand, up and coming coach would accept the Virginia job, especially considering how the tenures of Virginia's recent coaches have ended, remains even less clear.