Dave Leitao has been involved in the recruiting business long enough to know that players like Jerome Meyinsse do not routinely materialize in the spring of their senior years.

Leitao admittedly was focused on his 2007 recruiting class when he and his staff traveled to the Kingwood Classic, an AAU basketball event in Houston.

Leitao was scouting a game when he took a call from assistant Rob Lanier, who was in a different gymnasium. Lanier said there was a player he wanted Leitao to see.

It was Meyinsse, a 6-foot-9 senior from McKinley High School in Baton Rouge, La., who remained uncommitted despite making second-team all-state.

"Eight out of 10 times, when you see a player like that, there's a catch," Leitao said. "At this time of year, there's often something wrong with their academics or their character."

When they investigated Meyinsse's academics, the UVa coaches were shocked -- shocked at how good they were.

The son of two professors at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Meyinsse had a 4.0 grade-point average. His character, from all indications, was above reproach.

"I think what we were looking at was an exposure issue," Leitao said.

That might seem odd, given that Meyinsse was playing in the same city as a Final Four participant -- Louisiana State -- and for a high school that had produced LSU star Tyrus Thomas.

"Not a lot of [recruiters] were going down to Louisiana post-Hurricane Katrina," Leitao said. "And he didn't play much AAU ball, if any, because he's so academically oriented. He always had something going on that way."

The weekend he was in Houston, Meyinsse was supposed to be on a recruiting visit to Notre Dame.

He postponed that trip, which originally had been set up by Lewis Preston, an Irish assistant who subsequently took a job at Florida.

The Virginia coaches took one look at Meyinsse and could only hope that nobody else was watching.

"I remember seeing [LSU assistant] Butch Pierre under one of the baskets," said Gene Cross, who also had gotten a call from Lanier. "He was talking to a coach from Tulane. I kept thinking, 'Leave, Butch, please leave.'

"You figure, being there in Baton Rouge, he had to have seen [Meyinsse] before. The last thing we needed was for LSU to re-recruit him. It is rare to find a player with Jerome's credentials that late, but maybe coaches saw him in April [of 2005] and didn't like him enough to watch him as a senior. Sometimes, kids get a lot better during the school year."

Cross, who credits Lanier for much of the legwork with Meyinsse, remained at Virginia for only a short period after the signing period. At the advice of Preston, a coaching friend, Cross inquired about the Notre Dame opening and decided to return to his Midwestern roots.

Although they both had connections to the Meyinsse recruiting, Cross and Preston never discussed it.

"It's crazy how this business works," Cross said. "We're really good friends. I remain friends with a lot of people in this business by not talking about recruiting. Business is business and personal is personal. Sometimes, when I'm talking to a good friend, I'll say, 'OK, we've got to talk business now.' So, we didn't talk much about Jerome."

Cross said his first impression of Meyinsse was "that he was really, really active."

The UVa staff thinks he has a tremendous upside, but more immediate help should come from four other signees, 6-9 Ryan Pettinella from Webster, N.Y.; 6-9 Jamil Tucker from Gary, Ind.; 6-6 Will Harris from Corona, N.Y.; and 6-5 Nigerian Solomon Tat, who played in Stockbridge, Ga., the past three seasons.

Tat never signed a letter-of-intent with the Cavaliers, but is planning to begin UVa's Summer Transition Program in July.

Leitao knows the class will add to Virginia's skill level and its depth, but there's something else he likes about it.

"If you walked into one of our practices last year, we didn't have the most personality," Leitao said. "The gym wasn't lively. It was a team with good character, but it didn't have characters, if you know what I mean.

"That's something that these guys will bring to the table."