Capel on FSU, living in Pittsburgh, recruiting the portal and more

Jeff Capel met the media on Thursday to preview Saturday's game at Florida State and discuss a lot more. Here's the full rundown of what he said.

Louisville’s coach had some very high praise for your program after the game. Did you get a chance to see what he said?
Capel: I didn’t.

Here, I’ll pull up the quote for you because I would like your reaction to it. He said, ‘We’ve played a lot of good teams in this conference, but guys, I’m here to tell you, probably the most complete, the toughest team we’ve faced in this conference is Pittsburgh. Tough, fight, can score in multiple ways, they share the ball well, they talk on defense. When one guy is down -’ he basically just ranted for about five minutes about how good of a team you have. What’s your reaction when you hear other coaches complimenting your group like that?
Capel: I mean, it’s cool. I don’t really have much of a reaction. I just, for me, I’m just trying to concentrate on us. I can’t get into the opinion of what others think. If I do that, I have to worry about the other opinions, too. So I just try to stay focused and locked in on what we have to do to get better.

What most concerns you about Florida State?
Capel: Their size, their athleticism, their defense, their ability to pressure the basketball. Those things concern me. Obviously they beat us last time we played them here. Their size gave us some problems. Hopefully we can shoot the basketball better and hopefully we can defend better than we did last year.

Did you learn some things from that game?
Capel: Yeah. We’re able to learn stuff from all of them. And again, I think we got better from that game. We’re going to have to be a lot better Saturday afternoon.

This is the first time you guys have had a chance to play a team you lost to earlier in the year. Do you anticipate your guys having a little bit of extra motivation for a game like this?
Capel: I hope so. I certainly hope so. Anything, especially this time of year, that you can use as motivation is helpful. We should be. I mean, they came in here and they beat us, so hopefully we want to go down there and beat them.

What’s an area that you didn’t do well in the first Florida State game that you’re hoping that you are able to do well on Saturday?
Capel: Just one?

Or two or three.
Capel: Our transition defense needs to be a lot better. Our individual defense, keeping them out of the paint, that has to be a lot better than it was the last time. And then we have to have consistent ball movement. I thought we did the first six minutes of the game and the first six minutes, seven minutes of the second half. After that, I thought we became a little bit stagnant, so we have to be more consistent on the offensive end of moving the basketball.

Did you see your team get better at those things in the games following the Florida State loss?
Capel: I did. I did. But their defense is a little bit different from the standpoint of, they switch everything. So we have to do it against that, against a defense that’s switching everything and with the size, length and athleticism that they have.

Jamarius is obviously very confident handling the ball and playing off of it, but it seems like his confidence is growing each game. What’s one thing you’ve seen from him this year that he’s showing you, maybe another gear from the Jamarius Burton from last season?
Capel: I just think he’s more confident. I think that’s the thing. I think he’s more confident. I think he’s in a really good rhythm of playing. I thought he was a good player last year. I know he was confident. But I think the surrounding pieces around him this year fit him better, fit our team better, and I think it’s allowing him to feel more comfortable with leadership, more comfortable with his voice, expressing himself, and that’s helping his game.

Does Jamarius kind of pick and choose his spots as when he voices his opinion or voices something that he sees? Or is he very active with that?
Capel: I think every leader picks and chooses his spots. If you become one that says stuff all the time, then you get on people’s nerves and it loses its - you know, the message can be lost. So I do think he picks and chooses his spots.

Every time any of your players are asked about Greg, they always have a smile on their face. What is it about him that kind of brings so much joy through his teammates?
Capel: He’s a really good teammate. First and foremost, he’s a really good guy. That’s the first thing. Like, he is secure in who he is, as a player, as a man. He’s confident, but he’s all about the team. He’s very excited to see others do well. He wants to be a part of other people doing well. Whether that’s just him saying something, just him encouraging, he has the ability to care deeply, which can be rare for young people these days. I’ve got three of them at home, and it’s rare if they care about something besides themselves. He has the ability to do that.

How did you find Greg? Was it Shaka recommending him?
Capel: No. Jake Presutti on our staff was at Marquette and one of my best friends was the head coach there before he got fired, Wojo. So I knew about him, just because I watched Marquette all the time when Steve was the coach there. And then after this past season, when Greg decided to go into the transfer portal, we had an inside connection with Jake.

You had a very interesting offseason. You must have worn out about six cell phone batteries getting all of those guys. What was it like for you, an old-school basketball guy, to have to delve into that area in order to rebuild your team?

Capel: I thought we were more prepared for it this year than we were the previous year. I thought some additions to our staff really helped our staff have more information, to have more background, to just be more prepared once the season was over with. And one of the things that I told our staff when we sat down and we met shortly after the ACC Tournament - it was the Monday after - I said to them, from now until, I think I gave a date of July 1st, we need to have a lot of wins and that’s going to be recruiting. It’s going to be retention and recruiting. I thought everyone on our staff did a very good job from that point of getting the right pieces.

Did you add two full-time salaries to the department?
Capel: Well, what we did was, we added Kyle Cieplicki; he was the only new guy. But then we brought in Jake also, and those guys had a full year under their belt. They could really help us with the portal: to understand it, to have information right when the season was over with. Actually, before the season was over with, we had just information. Those guys had compiled a database of guys that could potentially go into the portal. So once the season was over with, we had an idea. Once names started going in, we had contacts right away where we could start that process.

Do you monitor the portal every day in the offseason?
Capel: I have someone on my staff that does. I don’t.

Approximately, how many people did you reach out to in the portal last offseason?
Capel: Not a lot. I didn’t. I mean, people on my staff may have. We didn’t reach out to a lot. We had targeted things of guys or things that we were looking for in guys. So it wasn’t a whole lot.

So you guys didn’t have a big board with a bunch of names?
Capel: We had a board. It wasn’t a board; it was a - everything’s computerized now, so it’s not the old school like I’m used to. We had a graph, I guess you’d say, where we had a bunch of names. We had the ability to click on it and you got information. There was another thing you could click on where you could see video, see highlights, see kind of who they were as a player. And then we’d sit and figure out the guys that we felt like that we wanted, that would fit what we’re looking for, and then we tried to go after those guys.

That process has to be difficult and complicated. Were you nervous at all that, ‘Oh my god, what if it doesn’t work out?’
Capel: Was I nervous? I don’t know if I was nervous. I felt like we had a lot to offer. And I felt like, if we could get guys here on campus, we’d have a good chance. And I thought that happened.

You talk about getting guys here; what are some places, maybe not even on campus, but in the city that you used to show guys who are visiting here for the first time that, ‘Hey, this is a really cool place?’
Capel: It’s everything. It’s just the city itself. It’s everything. We just try to get them to feel Pittsburgh, to feel campus, to feel the energy and just see it, because most people - like I did - have a perception of Pittsburgh, and when you get here, it’s nothing like you kind of perceived it or you thought it would be.

What was your perception of Pittsburgh before you got here?
Capel: I thought it would be old, steel, just cloudy all the time. I just thought it would be that, really, to be honest with you. And it’s - at least the places I go, it’s nothing like that. It’s really cool, it’s beautiful, especially in the fall, spring and summer. It’s always something to do. You have - obviously if you love sports, you have that year-round. The arts, entertainment, whether concerts, shows, whatever it is, museums, I mean, you have everything. You have really cool neighborhoods that, especially here in the city, each of them kind of have your places where you can go hang out, whether you’re in Squirrel Hill or Shadyside or other places like that. I’ve just found that in most of the people that we bring here - I’ve had friends that have come to visit, family members, and they’ve said the same thing: it’s a really cool city.

Is that a selling point when you go recruiting?
Capel: Yeah, absolutely.

I had the privilege of watching Nelly Cummings in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament last year. Is that something you look for, someone who has that experience of playing on that level?
Capel: Yeah. We wanted to try to target guys that come from winning backgrounds, that understand what it takes, because in order to win, you have to be selfless. You have to understand that not one person can do it by themselves. I don’t care who the best player in the world is, whether you think it’s Giannis, Curry, Embiid, Jokic - they can’t do it by themselves. So people that understand winning and that have won, they get that and they want to be a part of something instead of maybe wanting to be the something. When you look at Nelly - you just mentioned him - that program has done that. They have been as consistent as any team, and that’s the culture that they’ve built. So certainly he was someone that - that’s one of the qualities that we really liked about him, the fact that he had won, he had been a major part of that, and we felt like he could interject that into our program.

Do coaches help each other out in the portal if they think they have a guy who they think might need a change of scenery or something like that?
Capel: Sometimes. I mean, some coaches are honest if you call them to ask them an opinion. Some of them aren’t, because they may want to get rid of them. So it just depends. It depends on the relationship. For me, it depends on the relationship with the coach. If I know the coach or I know someone that knows him, I feel like I can get accurate information. But you have to be able to decipher that, because sometimes they want them out, so they’ll just say stuff.

Every coach has their quirks; when you’re preparing for a Leonard Hamilton team, what can you expect to see? And does this team embody what a typical Hamilton team might look like?
Capel: Well, you know you’re going to see length, athleticism, size, pressure, switching everything. It’s a team that you can’t run a particular offense against; you have to play offense. They take you out of your plays with the way that they defend. Is this a typical team? No, because they have a lot of injuries. I think he probably feels like he had some guys that he thought would be back that turned pro. And then they were just hit major injuries in the preseason, so they don’t have the depth that they normally have. They normally play 11, 12 guys. They’re not doing that. It’s funny, when you look at Florida State this year, they have some guys that are in like the top 10 in minutes played; I don’t think it’s been that way since I’ve been here. At times, they’ve had their best players come off - I mean, Scottie Barnes came off the bench. Pat Williams came off the bench. So they’ve had a lot of depth. They still have depth, but not like they’ve had because of those injuries.

Would you say your Rolodex is pretty thick with coaches’ phone numbers?
Capel: I don’t talk to a lot of coaches.

Oh, you don’t?
Capel: No. I don’t talk to a lot of coaches. I have some friends. I don’t talk to a lot of coaches. I have some friends that are in it and I have some people I associate with, but not a lot.

It just is what it is. I don’t think about it.

Earlier this week, Lebron became the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. Do you have any memories of interacting with Lebron when he was a younger guy?
Capel: I never saw him in high school. I never saw him play live. I saw him on TV, obviously admired him from afar. My only interaction with him was a few times with USA Basketball. Obviously I think he’s a savant, he’s brilliant, he’s one of the best basketball players to ever play, and that breaking is something I never thought we’d see - I’d see. It’s just a testament to how great he is, and he’s someone that probably won’t be fully appreciated until he stops. Sometimes that’s what happens with guys, especially with him, I mean, in everything: off the court, on the court, he’s such an example of what a good guy is.

The managers on the basketball team are some of the most dedicated guys to the team. They don’t get a lot of the flash of being on the team, but can you speak to the level of commitment of your group of guys?
Capel: They’re unbelievable. Our guys love them. We love them. They’re a big part of our team. We can’t be our best without them. We can’t function without them. They’re an integral part of the team. I tell my team that. The first time we have a meeting, they’re in there, and I tell them they're a part of our team. Don’t mistreat them, get to know them, develop relationships with them. They’re here to help us. They’re not here to do things for you. They’re here to help us, just like we’re here to help them. They give us energy, we give them energy. They’re tireless. They’re dedicated. They’re loyal. And they’re a big part of what we do.