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March 20, 2007
CHARLOTTESVILLE – Virginia men’s head basketball coach Dave Leitao visited with media representatives on Tuesday (March 20) about the program and the 2006-07 season. Following are excerpts from the session.
Reporter: How can you replace the scoring J.R. Reynolds provided and how much of a role will incoming recruit Jeff Jones play in that next year?
Coach Leitao: It’s going to be even more difficult to replace J.R. the person than the scorer because he brought a lot to the table during the time we were together. When you’re a four-year player and you evolve as he’s evolved, then that becomes very difficult to replace and it’s hard to replace it with one person. From the scoring standpoint, if you don’t have another guy who can get you 18 points a game, then you’re going to do it in a lot of different ways. I wouldn’t put all of that pressure on Jeff Jones coming in and having to do that. There are four guys coming in right now that have to help share the load, there’s a maturity that has to take place with the first-years we had this year as well as the other group of guys that have to work real hard to improve themselves in different areas. I think each team that faces losing seniors, especially if they’ve contributed significantly as J.R. and Jason Cain have, then you have to fill a void and obviously that’s our challenge in the off-season.
Reporter: Do you know Sean Singletary’s plan right now as far as attending pre-draft camps?
Coach Leitao: Sean and I had a long conversation yesterday and most of it is and does remain private. The basis of our conversation was that he doesn’t have intentions of doing that.
Additional question concerning Sean’s plans.
Coach Leitao: His plan as of yesterday afternoon was to get some rest and continue to work hard to be better as a player and to have his team be better.
Reporter: For the freshmen on the team this year, given the fact they were exposed to the college game and the differences from what they’d experienced previously, is it a safe assumption that in an off-season a player can make the most progress between his first and his second year in terms of knowing what to work on and having gained that needed experience?
Coach Leitao: Yes, that’s fair. I don’t know that I’ve done an in-depth study on what year could be a breakout year for a guy in terms of his off-season work, but the thing about this group is that I think they learned a lot. It was challenging. We returned the same starting five and basically the same group from last year. It was going to be difficult for any one of them, unless they were really special as a basketball player, to crack that line-up consistently. Yes they added depth, yes they all had their moments and there were times that they struggled too. I think that if I’d thrown any one of them in there, not necessarily as a starter but as a 20 some odd minute player, from the start of the season until now we would have seen much more productivity from any one of them. As you look at the off-season, it gives them an opportunity to see how high the bar was set and how hard they have to work to improve.
Reporter: What are the things at the top of your “To Do” list for the off-season?
Coach Leitao: A general statement I’ve made is that it’s hard to get there and harder to stay. When you talk about setting a bar and a precedent for how you want your program to operate, then zeroing in on those few things that will help you stay there are important. One of them is obviously player improvement. That comes in a couple of different ways. Getting them back in the gym on an individual basis and getting each one of them as much improved as they can possibly be. Then mentally getting them improved as well. The other part of it is to continue the process by which you build a program. An arm of it is recruiting, an arm of it is to continue to change the culture into a winning culture here in this community and nationally, and getting the awareness of what we’re trying to do continually out in full view of the public.
Reporter: What is the significance of a season like this and does it give you more credibility with recruits and high school coaches?
Coach Leitao: Off the top it does. There are times a team has won a national championship and as a result a kid really wants to go to school there. I don’t know that it has come quite that far, but it has helped tremendously. A large part of the significance of potentially winning a game like we played on Sunday is having another week where you don’t just do your recruiting yourself, but USA Today does it, ESPN does it, newspapers do it, the internet does it. That is recruiting that you can’t put a price tag on because it’s immeasurable and very valuable. Those kind of things have to continue to happen if the mission we all came here to do is going to be accomplished, which is to have Virginia among the great teams in the country.
Reporter: It seemed the other day like Sean wasn’t really familiar with the whole process as far as pre-draft camps are concerned.
Coach Leitao: When he and I talked I went back over the newspaper article, and I thought it was more he was answering questions as opposed to making statements. I think there’s a very significant level of naivety, not only on his part but on the part of a lot of kids concerning how this process works. He hadn’t thought a whole lot about it and that brings about even more naivety. What he was thinking about is that he’s more excited right now about having a pain free spring and summer to work out. He’s never had that since coming to college. We’ve talked, even when we first met, about the opportunity to work out with people he knows that are professional basketball players or former pro players. That kind of thing is what he was focusing on as opposed to the NBA draft or workouts or anything like that.