When Jim Copeland hears some of the names being mentioned in connection with Virginia's search for a men's basketball search, he must feel as if he's been caught in a time warp.

Rick Barnes, Mike Montgomery, Dave Odom, Pete Gillen. Even Tubby Smith and Dave Leitao. All were involved, in some fashion, with the transition that followed Terry Holland's resignation that became effective following the 1990 season.

"Sure, I've made the connection," said Copeland, named the athletic director at Southern Methodist in December 1994.

Prior to that, Copeland had been the athletic director at UVa for more than seven years.

"The very hardest thing an athletic director has to do is hire a football or basketball coach," said Copeland in a phone interview Wednesday from Dallas. "Sure, I caught a lot of flak, but it wasn't too bad a hire."

Copeland was referring to his elevation of assistant coach Jeff Jones, then 29. In Jones' first five seasons, the Cavaliers went to the NCAA tournament four times and captured the 1992 NIT championship.

"At the time, if I'm not mistaken, he had more victories over his first four seasons than any coach in ACC history," Copeland said.

Jones won 80 games in his first four seasons, a mark surpassed this year by Skip Prosser, who has a 96-35 record after four seasons at Wake Forest. Vic Bubas won 86 games in his first four years at Duke, 1960-63, but that did not diminish Jones' feat.

If it seems like the current search - now in its 24th day - has taken a long time, there has been no comparison with 1990.

"I had too much time," said Copeland when asked if he had any regrets.

Holland had announced June23, 1989, that the 1989-90 season would be his last. However, nearly 10 months would pass before Jones was introduced as the new coach April16, 1990.

Two weeks earlier, Copeland thought he had an agreement with Barnes, then the coach at Providence.

"He sat down in front of the president [Robert O'Neil] and me, we offered him the job and he accepted it," Copeland said.

Then, Copeland and Barnes flew back to Providence, where Barnes was to tell Providence and Big East officials of the decisions. Copeland waited in the pilot's lounge for what seemed like an eternity before Barnes informed him that he was staying.

They have run into each other on several occasions in Texas, where Barnes has been head coach at the University of Texas for seven seasons, but the Barnes snub has not come up. Copeland knows the decision was not made frivolously.

"You could see he was torn by it," Copeland said. "I felt like he had put me and the university in an awkward spot."

In the short period of time between Barnes' acceptance and his reversal, Copeland called his other two finalists, Mike Montgomery and Bruce Parkhill, then the head coaches at Stanford and Penn State. That gave them the opportunity to withdraw their names from consideration.

"I felt it was the honorable thing to do," Copeland said. "Some people wondered how smart it was."

Copeland subsequently turned to Gillen, who was at Xavier. However, Gillen was preparing for an overseas trip and there were logistical problems in arranging a trip to campus.

Obviously, there was a perception that any new candidates would know they were the second choice to Barnes, but Copeland didn't sense that with Gillen. Gillen became the UVa coach after Jones went 11-19 in 1997-98, his second losing season in three years.

"Pete and I just had a hard time making the calendar work," Copeland said.

By then, Odom, a long-time Virginia assistant, had wrapped up his first season as the head coach at Wake Forest. When the Deacons originally asked permission to speak to Odom in 1989, Holland went to Copeland and pitched the idea of guaranteeing Odom's ascension to the top spot when Holland retired.

"I said Terry, 'When are you leaving?'" Copeland said. "There had to be a timetable and he didn't know. It could have been one to five to eight years. I couldn't commit to that."

Smith and Leitao were not involved in Virginia's search for a head coach in 1990, but both men were pursued by Virginia - as assistant coaches. Smith, then at Kentucky, was the first person approached by Jones as he attempted to put together a staff.

Jones, who had gotten to know Smith during the latter's tenure as a Virginia Commonwealth assistant, had gone as far as lining up the UVa school plane to fly to Lexington, Ky., before Wildcats' coach Rick Pitino persuaded Smith to stay.

With two positions to fill, Jones went after Leitao, who ultimately decided to remain with his mentor and former Northeastern University coach, Jim Calhoun, on the staff at Connecticut. The full-time assistants on Jones' first staff were Brian Ellerbe and Dennis Wolff, who, after four straight 20-win seasons at Boston University, has attracted a cult following among past UVa colleagues.

At SMU, Copeland has the benefits of a clip service that has enabled him to follow the Virginia coach search and other college trends. Moreover, his son, Trey, is one of the operators of thesabre.com Web site, although Copeland doesn't spend his time in Internet chat rooms.

"I never get on those chat pages," he said. "Never have and never will."

That's one headache he didn't have 15 years ago.