Tobacco Road Report

In this segment of the TRR All-ACC Awards, we offer our selection for coach of the year.

The Tobacco Road Report ACC Men's Basketball Coach of the Year Award goes to Dave Leitao of the Virginia Cavaliers. The Virginia Cavaliers were picked to finish in the bottom half of the conference by most experts in the pre-season polling, but instead surged to an 11-5 conference record and a share of the regular season conference title with North Carolina.

We weren't much better in our pre-season analysis, picking the Cavaliers to finish seventh in conference. At the time we asked, "They have the pieces and a new home court. Will it add to something good?" Little did we know how good it would be.

Despite dropping their last game to Wake and missing a chance to win the regular season conference crown outright in the process, the Cavaliers can be very proud of their success this season. They held their home court advantage by going undefeated in conference play and head coach Dave Leitao consistently gets more out of his talent than anyone else in conference. Knowing how to stop Virginia is easy, doing it is hard. Leitao prepared his team for each and every game. For these reasons we name him our coach of the year. From UConn to DePaul to Virginia, Dave Leitao is quickly establishing himself as a coach to watch.

The selection was difficult in the end since we thought Gary Williams was also deserving. He believed in his Terrapin squad when most others had given up. His dogged determination (and adjustments to the offense and defense that went largely unnoticed by the mainstream media) kept his team believing they could improve and be a factor in conference.

The transformation of a defensive specialist (Strawberry) into a scorer, a jump shooter (Jones) into a well rounded offensive threat, and maturation of several freshman had some of the TRR staff making a strong case for Williams.

But in the end we don't like awarding co-this or co-that awards. It's winner take all. We had to make a decision and we went with Dave Leitao. Congratulations to the Virginia Cavaliers.