Dave Leitao was fired as Virginia men's basketball coach without seeing his first recruiting class reach its senior year, much less its Senior Day.

Yet, even if Leitao had returned to UVa for a fifth season, Senior Day ceremonies would have been underwhelming.

Introductions prior to the Cavaliers' game Saturday with Maryland should give UVa supporters a good indication of why the men's basketball program is in the mess it is.

From a class that originally included four freshmen and a junior-college transfer, all that remains is Solomon Tat, who is averaging 2.6 minutes per game, and Jerome Meyinsse, who never left the bench for the last 10 games of the 2008-2009 season.

It is a tribute to Meyinsse that he has become the showpiece of UVa's 2006 recruiting class, a three-time ACC All-Academic selection who scored a career-high 21 points and grabbed seven rebounds in last Sunday's loss to No. 5 Duke.

Meyinsse, who has scored in double figures in three consecutive games, signed with the Cavaliers on May 15, 2006 -- two days before the end of the spring signing period.

Franchise players are not available at that time of the year. Meyinsse was recruited for insurance and has been a "project" in the best sense of the word. Not all projects get better, but Meyinsse has.

Meyinsse's fellow freshmen were Tat, Will Harris and Jamil Tucker. In the fall 2005 edition of the Prep Stars Recruiter's Handbook, Harris was rated the No. 77 prospect in the country, Tat was 91st and was Tucker 98th.

That's three national top 100 players and none of them ever averaged 10 points in a season. None of them, including junior-college transfer Ryan Pettinella, scored 500 points in his UVa career.

Pettinella had spent his first two years at Pennsylvania, followed by a year in junior college, where he did not play. Unfortunately for Pettinella, his UVa career is mainly remembered for horrendous free-throw shooting (18-for-72).

Meyinsse referred recently to rings the Cavaliers received for winning the ACC championship -- actually, tying for first in the regular-season race -- but that seems like a lifetime ago.

That 2006-2007 team reached the second round of the NCAA tournament and finished 21-11 with Harris playing in all 32 games and averaging 13.9 minutes per game. That was seventh on the team, just barely behind Tunji Soroye at 13.9.

Back problems dogged Harris the next year and, by the fall of 2008, he was gone. Leitao signed off on a hardship appeal that enabled Harris to play immediately at Albany.

Harris, who had the brawn of a power forward but neither the height nor the disposition to play that way, is averaging 12.6 points and 4.2 rebounds for an Albany team that is 7-24.

Harris has made 44 3-pointers this season at Albany, which would rank second on UVa's team, but he hasn't turned around Albany's program. It's hard to see how he would have been the answer at UVa.

The same with Tucker, although his 7.4-point average last year was the highest posted by a Class of 2006 recruit.

Tucker was supposed to be on this team; in fact, he was enrolled for the first semester. UVa announced Nov. 11 that he was taking a leave of absence from the team, but on the night that UVa played New Jersey Institute of Technology on Dec. 21, Tucker went through a strenuous workout with assistant coach Ritchie McKay before the game.

One day later, presumably following the release of fall-semester grades, Tucker was dismissed from the team.

Clearly, Tucker was at fault for not taking care of his business off the floor. How much blame falls on the staff not monitoring Tucker more closely is inconsequential. The end result was the same -- the almost complete disintegration of a recruiting class.

Three seniors will be recognized before Saturday's 1:30 p.m. tipoff.. Meyinsse and Tat will be joined by Calvin Baker, a fifth-year senior who also arrived in the fall of 2006 but was ineligible after transferring from William and Mary.

Baker came to Virginia without a scholarship but actually has played more than any of the 2006 signees. He averaged 8.6 and 8.4 points in the first two seasons in which he was eligible for UVa but has seen his average drop to 3.2 this year.

Baker did not play Wednesday at Boston College and his career will be ending with a thud. Call it mediocrity by association. It hasn't been a pleasant experience for anybody associated with the Class of 2006, even Meyinsse, whose late-season blossoming has been tempered by an eight-game losing streak.

No matter what emotions Leitao experienced after the 2008-2009 season, another year with these guys might have sent him over the brink.