Mailbag: Who would I have on my Mount Rushmore of UVA coaches?

A reader wrote me with a link to a column from Steve DeShazo, the former Free Lance-Star sports editor and columnist, and all-around nice guy, in which DeShazo listed his Mount Rushmore of UVA coaches.

I know what the reader was trying to do – get me to come up with my own Mount Rushmore of UVA coaches.

Let me just say here up front: I hate Mount Rushmores. With a passion.

But also, I get it – especially in the summertime, when we’re waiting for the fall college sports schedule to get going, and for me, the one thing that I hate more than Mount Rushmore columns is, columns on position coaches talking up the depth chart at nose tackle and slot receiver.

Which means, here we go.

First, to DeShazo’s column – he noted at the top that he wasn’t going to include Tony Bennett, because all Bennett did was build on Terry Holland, then, didn’t include Terry Holland.

Terry Holland is an obvious choice, the cornerstone – if there’s no Terry Holland, there’s no 1976 ACC Tournament championship, there’s no Ralph Sampson years, there’s no George Welsh or anything after.

Without Terry Holland doing Terry Holland things, UVA Athletics may be Boston College, or for that matter, D3.

Just as obvious, and DeShazo got this one, is Welsh – we got the part about succeeding him wrong, then got the two rebuilds after the first mistake with hiring Al Groh wrong, but Scott Stadium isn’t 61,500 seats if there’s no George Welsh.

DeShazo also got giving a spot to Debbie Ryan right. Three Final Fours in a row, Dawn Staley, the rest.

Again, we didn’t succeed her right, and we’re still picking up the pieces there, but that’s not Debbie’s fault any more than Al Groh, Mike London, et al, are George’s fault.

DeShazo gave his other two spots to Bruce Arena, who won five national championships in men’s soccer, and Todd DeSorbo, who is on six national championships and counting in women’s swimming.

I can’t agree on DeSorbo, entirely because he continues to employ a guy named Gary Taylor, a former assistant with DeSorbo at NC State and former head coach at Auburn.

Taylor was put on a two-year probation last year by the U.S. Center for SafeSport after admitting to emotional abuse of swimmers at NC State and Auburn.

This is a scandal in any other sport, but women’s swimming isn’t exactly something that gets a lot of attention outside of its small group of diehards.

Arena isn’t a bad choice for his building the underpinnings of success in soccer, but I’d go for my fourth spot with either Bennett, for reviving UVA Basketball, after we got the post-Terry Holland era wrong, for more than 20 years, or Brian O’Connor, who built a winner in baseball out of the absolute air.

As much as O’Connor burned bridges with the way he left last spring, I’m actually torn between BOC and TB, and leaning toward BOC, just because he did what he did to build something new from scratch, which also happens to give us something to do when basketball is done, and extends the academic sports year into June, most years.