CHARLOTTESVILLE He moved into the big chair a year ago last Wednesday. What an experience it's been for Craig Littlepage, who succeeded his mentor, Terry Holland, as the University of Virginia's athletic director.

Before Littlepage had been on the job a month, the Sept. 11 attacks forced him to implement new security measures at U.Va. athletic events, as well as reschedule a nationally televised football game with Penn State. In November, the men's basketball game between Virginia and Michigan State at the Richmond Coliseum gained national notoriety when officials ended it prematurely because of treacherous playing conditions.

"Every once in a while, something comes up and you can go to your AD 101 manual and say, 'OK, this is how you handle this particular situation,'" Littlepage said. "These are the types of situations that aren't in the manual.

"The terrorist attack was uncharted territory for everybody, and I was, looking back, very pleased with how we as an institution, how this athletic department and how I, in particular, handled that situation."

As for the Coliseum fiasco, the "fact was we did everything in our power to play the game," Littlepage said, "and I think it was obvious to everybody there that the game could not continue."

During a recent interview in his McCue Center office, Littlepage, 51, reflected on his first year as AD. Except for a six-year period during which he coached men's basketball at his alma mater, Pennsylvania, and then Rutgers, Littlepage has been at U.Va. since 1976. He was promoted to senior associate athletic director in 1995 and held that post until June 2001, when he was named interim AD.

He's no rookie. Yet he wasn't totally prepared for what awaited him in Hol- land's former office.

"The volume of information that flows into an athletic department and flows to a director of athletics specifically can be, and many times is, overwhelming," Littlepage said. "You have to be very well-organized and efficient and have excellent and competent people around you just to handle the overwhelming nature of the information and how that information gets processed. And that's something I'm still learning how to deal with."

His predecessor applauds Littlepage's performance.

"I believe that Craig has established himself very quickly as one of the top ADs in the country," said Holland, now a special assistant to U.Va. President John T. Casteen III. "He had already served on the [NCAA's] academics and eligibility committee and the infractions committee and now, with his basketball committee appointment, gives us a huge national profile.

"More importantly, he has worked hard to develop the same kind of credibility internally with all our constituencies, and that is much harder come by than national credibility, since you have to make decisions that do not make everyone happy all the time."

Littlepage, the first black athletic director at an ACC school, has stayed exceptionally busy. Among other things, he's overseen the renovation of Virginia's baseball stadium, restructured the fund-raising operation for athletics, joined the NCAA's prestigious Division I men's basketball committee, announced plans to fully fund all 25 varsity sports by 2005, and hired a public relations firm, Carter Ryley Thomas, to thorougly evaluate his operation and how his department is perceived.

According to Littlepage, though, his department's most important accomplishment has been its planning for the 15,000-seat arena - price tag: $128 million - that is scheduled to open in 2006.

"It's the biggest project this athletic department has ever taken on," he said, "and it's significant in terms of the impact not only on the athletic department but specifically the basketball programs and, in a larger sense, the university as a whole. Because it offers the university and this region a facility that is desperately needed."

Littlepage is intent on "reaching out to the rest of the university and the community at large, and that's admirable," said Jon Oliver, a senior associate AD at U.Va. "I think that's required in this day and age, and I think he understands that better than most people."

Virginia's athletic department finished the most recent fiscal year in the black, Oliver said. In competition, the Cavaliers weren't always as successful. U.Va. finished 27th in the Sears Directors' Cup standings for 2001-02. Before 2000-01, when it dropped to 30th, Virginia had never placed worse than 22nd in the Sears Cup race.

Littlepage says he's not worried that his program is in decline. Had a couple of its teams fared better, he knows, U.Va. would have finished much higher. To wit: Men's basketball, once ranked No. 4 in the polls, failed to make the NCAA tourney and thus earned no Sears Cup points. Men's soccer, expected to contend for the national title, lost its first game in the NCAAs.

"I think again this past year was a year in which one or two situations, had they gone differently, would have made all the difference in the world," Littlepage said.