Jeff Capel covered a lot of ground during his media availability on Thursday, and here's the full rundown of everything he said.

You often talk about good shots and you’re comfortable with your guys taking shots as long as they’re good shots. I was curious, thinking about that and Blake’s range. How far out are you comfortable with Blake? Because he seems to like firing it up from pretty deep? How comfortable are you with his range and you still count it as a good shot?
Capel: I’m pretty comfortable with it. The thing I’ve learned with Blake is that he’s going to take some bad ones, but he has the ability to make some bad ones, so I have to be really careful with how I coach him and what I say, because he has the ability to - a shot that you may think is bad, that could be the thing that gets him going and he can go on one of those streaks where he makes three, four, five in a row. So he has a little bit of latitude.

How long does it take to develop that trust in a player? Is that something you have to see happen in a game, or if you see it in practice do you say, ‘Okay, I can trust him’?
Capel: I mean, a little bit of both. A little bit of both. You have some guys that, you obviously have to see it in a game and if you see it in practice, then you have the ability to do it in a game. If you do it in practice, you get to the game and it’s not going, then you may have to change some things. I’ve seen guys that never miss in practice and they get in games and they struggle. I’ve seen guys that don’t practice well, but when the lights come on, they’re very, very different. So it’s getting to know them, getting to know each other, to see how they are when there’s competition, when there’s people in the stands, when a TV is here - just whatever. So you just have to learn guys.

How does Cassell Coliseum rank among difficult venues in the ACC?
Capel: It’s very difficult. It’s a great environment. They have a great fan base. It gets loud in there. It helps that they’re good, so I think they feed off of each other. It’s a really, really good environment.

So is it even more important for these guys to talk among themselves?
Capel: Absolutely. It’s important all the time, but even more so when you go on the road because you know you’re going to face a crowd that’s hostile.

At this point in the season, I would imagine they’re pretty comfortable in those situations?
Capel: I hope so. I feel we are, but we have to keep doing it.

You guys right now have the second-lowest field goal percentage allowed to your opponents in the conference. What have you seen from your guys pushing through it in practice to keep up the defensive pressure that you guys have shown?
Capel: I think it’s a lot of studying, watching tape, especially this time of year because it’s not a lot we can do in practice, as far as physicality. We walk through, we break down different things, we watch a lot of tape collectively as a group, individually with guys, with positions, talk about tendencies, try to get our guys to understand the opponent’s tendency, them as a team, individuals. And so it’s a lot of that stuff right now, and it’s just something that we try to do every day. We try to have some sort of aspect every day of something defensively, whether it be walk-through, whether it be shell drill, whether it be break down stuff, whatever it is, we try to do that, we try to have some aspect of where we watch tape of our opponent or even us, you know, some things that we need to improve on. When I say we talk about feedback, that’s one of the things. Sometimes it will be - you know, I come up with different labels. It will be teaching defense, some things that we need to work on. It could be bad defense, something that we didn’t do well. Normally there’s some things that we’ve done really well. It’s better when there are a lot of things that we’ve done well on that side.

So it’s just constantly trying to teach and trying to get them to see. And then it’s also understanding how guys learn. Some guys are visual learners. Some guys, they can look at a scouting report and know it. Some guys, you have to verbalize it to them. So it’s a lot of that, just trying to figure out the best way that they’re able to retain stuff.

Have there been any times when, you know, coaches do their scouting reports and you guys have your plan going into a film meeting, and then you have players who have done their own scouting and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve seen this’ and they have their own input. Has that ever caught you off-guard?
Capel: We have guys this year that do a lot of watching tape on their own, or coming up with a coach and doing that. We have guys on this team that watch a lot of games together. Like, they may have seen three or four Virginia Tech games that they’ve just watched on their own, that they’ve talked about. We’ll be in practice or we’ll be in walk-through, we’ll go through things, and I may ask them at times, ‘How do you want to guard this?’ Or they may say, ‘Coach, what about switching this or what if we do this?’ So it’s collaborative. It is collaborative. I trust these guys. I think there’s a maturity about them. There may be times in a game, in a timeout, where they may say, ‘Hey look, why don’t we do this defense?’ Or ‘Coach, can we switch this or can we play this a different way?’ And I trust them with that. I may not agree with them all the time and may not do it, but I welcome their input.

Is that a new thing for you to do? Or is it just maybe with select teams?
Capel: It’s been select teams. It’s something that, over time, when you have teams or groups that you - you know, you get to know them and you see that they can do it. I’ve had that before. I don’t know if I’ve had it, really, since I’ve been here. But I’ve had teams where that definitely has happened.

Throughout the course of a game, how much would you say you turn to your assistant coaches for different perspective or maybe something different that they’re seeing? And how much of that input does go into and influence decisions throughout the game?
Capel: I’d say a lot. I mean, I think they’re really good, all of the coaches on our staff. I think they’re really good and I trust their input. They may see things that I don’t see. Depending on whose scout it is, they probably watched more tape than me, and I watch a lot. Our video guy watches more than all of us, so they have different insights. They have different things that they see. I may not agree with them all. I may not do them all. But I want to hear them.

I’m a guy - I like to think out loud. I like to hear things, because it may be something triggers something that, maybe ‘I didn’t see this in this game, I did see this team do this to them’ and it may be something that triggers.

During the game, I’m always turned, just saying something. I’m just saying it out loud and maybe - I know one of you guys asked me, it seems like I’m talking to Kyle a lot; I’m talking to all of them. Sometimes they don’t all listen to me, but I’m talking to all of them and I want input from all of them.

In times that you might disagree with what one of your assistants might see versus what you see, whatever the situation is, is there some back-and-forth between what the next decision, what the next step is and how to adjust?
Capel: I mean, there’s always - I just, listen, sometimes I may say, ‘I don’t want to do that’ or ‘I don’t think that will be good for us’ and then we go on. As the head coach, you’re the ultimate decision-maker. Everything falls on you. When you’re an assistant, you can have a lot of suggestions, but as the head coach, I have to be the one who makes the final decision. So there is back-and-forth. Not as much as a game is going on and a timeout, dead ball situation, things like that. But a lot before games where we meet, we go over scouting, we talk, so it’s very collaborative.

Complicated might be the wrong word, but when did basketball get so involved with videos and stats and metrics and all these detailed scouting reports? Was it like that when you were in highs school?
Capel: It definitely wasn’t like that when I was in high school. When I played my four years at Duke, especially my first year, we were really good, and my last year, we were good - we didn’t do a lot of walk-throughs, because our thing was pressure. And I remember my freshman year, going though a walk-through and we would walk through like half a play. Coach’s thing was, ‘Okay, they’re going to start it over here; if they’re able to reverse it, then we’re not playing good defense.’

So it’s become more involved over the years. I think probably the NBA has a lot to do with that: a lot more scouting, a lot more video, a lot more - staffs are bigger, there are more coaches, there are more people on staffs now. So it definitely is more intricate. But at the end of the day, it comes down to the same thing: Can you defend the ball? Can you defend the ball screen? Can you get back in transition? Can you understand the strengths of the team and what they’re trying to do? And do you have the ability to take some of those things away? It always comes down to that.

You’ve said a bunch of times about how good you think the ACC is this year. Other people are perceiving it to be a down year in the ACC. Why do you think people feel that way and do you think it’s kind of unfair that that bias has affected some teams getting rankings or certain things like that?
Capel: I definitely think that it’s unfair and it’s not true, what people say about our league or what’s been said about our league. I think our league is really good. Now, some leagues that are really - and other leagues are really good. Some of them may only have 10 teams, where we have 15. But when you look at it, you know, we have a team that’s in the top 10 in the country. We have two other teams that are in the top 25. We have a team that was preseason ranked No. 1 and spent time at No. 1. We have another team that was, at one point, in the top five. We have another team, in Virginia Tech, that, at one point, was a top-20 team. So I think there’s depth in our league. I think there are really good players. I think there are really good coaches.

I’m not sure why. I don’t understand the metrics. I don’t pretend to understand how they equate and how they come up with all these numbers. I know when we went head-to-head - there’s a challenge that we had against another really, really good league; if my math is correct, we came out on top. The ACC came out on top. So I don’t really understand why. Perhaps some of it is that the two programs in our league nationally-known aren’t in the top 25 right now, so maybe there’s a little bit of that.

All I know is that every team in this league is really good. We’re getting ready to play one on Saturday and we respect every team in this league.

What makes Virginia Tech good?
Capel: They’re older. They have a good core group of guys back. They’re really good offensively. They have experience. They’re well-coached. It’s a tough environment to play in down there. I think all of those things are why they’re good.

Virginia Tech moves the ball pretty well. I think they’re top-40 in the country in assists per game. Is there a way for a defense to disrupt good ball movement or counter it?
Capel: Well, it hasn’t been a lot this year playing them, especially there at Cassell. I think they’re a very - I think one of the things that makes them so good is that they get into a really good rhythm. The ball has energy. If you can - and again, teams try; it’s difficult, because of their spacing, their ability to put the ball on the floor, their ability to shoot the basketball, they have a really unique in Mutts, he’s like a point forward that leads them in assists, rebounding and that plays away from the basket. He can score inside, obviously he can really pass it. They have a big that can really shoot the basketball, that can stretch you, so it’s difficult. If you can try to disrupt their rhythm, that’s what teams try; they haven’t had a lot of success. Hopefully we can have some success in doing that.

You’ve talked several times about this group, how these guys have gotten over themselves, they’ve gotten past themselves to look at the team first. Does that mentality help when you guys aren’t getting the recognition that some people think you deserve? That it doesn’t bother them as much because they’re sort of like, ‘Whatever, we care about March, not what the rankings are on February 12.’
Capel: You know, to be honest with you, I don’t know what they think because I’ve never talked to them about it. All we’ve talked about is trying to get better each day. I’m pretty sure they probably feel a certain way about it, because as a player, you always want to feel like you’re respected. But that’s not a conversation that I’ve had with them, about ‘What do you think about what other people think?’ The thing we’ve talked about since we’ve been together is, just concentrate on us. What can we control? The thing that we can control is us: how hard we play, how together we are, how unselfish we are, understanding the scouting report, being able to try to execute a game plan, holding each other accountable. Those are the things - we can’t worry about what the external world or the people that are in our sport or whoever’s doing whatever thinks. We just focus on us. And we’ve been pretty good at that. Hopefully we can continue to be good at that.

When you were a player, how much did you read the paper, check the polls, keep up on things?
Capel: I didn’t. I didn’t. Once I got into this - and I don’t know if I grew up in it, my father was a coach - I learned not to really pay much attention to the outside world or to what people outside thought. It’s more difficult now, because when I was playing, there was no social media, the Internet was brand new, no one really understood it. You had talk radio. You didn’t even have message boards back then and talk radio was just coming where it was pretty big.

My first year, we were really good, we were ranked No. 1 in the country for a good part of the season. My sophomore year, I was on probably the worst team ever at Duke. I’m glad I didn’t listen to stuff then. My senior year at Duke, I got boo’d at Cameron. That was very difficult for me. I remember being at a home game the next game after that and I remember being out shooting before the game and I looked up and my family’s passing around a newspaper. There was an article in the state newspaper there, the News & Observer, there was a big picture of me and it said something, I think the headline was something like ‘A fallen star.’

That was difficult for a guy that loved the program and was trying like heck to fight and to get this thing turned around. So I do have empathy for these young guys, but it’s one of the reasons - we try to talk to them about not listening to that stuff, not paying attention, don’t look at social media, don’t search your name, don’t do these things. But that probably falls on deaf ears, because these young people are addicted to it.

So it’s a completely different time now, but the thing that we’ve done a good job is staying present with each other and not allowing that to get to us.

I know the tournament is three weeks away, but do you talk at all about - the double bye is a big deal in the tournament, do you talk about, ‘Let’s get that double bye’?
Capel: We’ve not talked about it once. They may, but it’s not something that we’ve talked to them about. The only thing we’ve talked about is what’s in front of us, the next step, and right now it’s just Virginia Tech. That’s it.

At the start of the season, do you set goals for the team? Do you set specific, tangible ‘Let’s do this, let’s do that’?
Capel: We just talk about trying to get better each day. We don’t talk about number of wins or what we’re trying to do. We just talk about trying to be the best versions of who we can be everyday. The only thing I’ve said to them, really all year - I’ve done it since I’ve been here; it seems like it’s resonated this year - is to really concentrate on being a very good teammate. Because if you can do that, then you’re thinking of something and someone besides you, and normally when you do that, good stuff happens for you individually.

The reason I ask is, there’s five games left in the regular season and you have a chance to win the conference, a really good conference, which I’m sure nobody outside of your room thought was possible back in October. So I didn’t know if that was - is that something that ever comes up?
Capel: Again, I think they have talked about it. The guys have talked about it. But it’s not something that we as a staff have talked about with them. We’ve just talked about, again, it’s a broken record, but what’s in front of us? What can we control? And that’s right now?

You’ve said a couple times that JB has been a good leader but it didn’t, for whatever reason, take as much of a hold last year as opposed to this year. Is he doing anything different this year or is it really just the makeup of the team?
Capel: He’s not doing anything different. He’s not doing anything different.

Well, let me take that back: I think he probably is. I think he is probably utilizing his voice more, because I would guess he feels heard and feels like it resonates with the guys. Sometimes as a leader, when you’re saying stuff and you’re trying to do stuff and it doesn’t feel like it’s registering, at times you can just, ‘Okay, I’m going to stop trying.’ I’m not saying that’s right, but sometimes that can happen, especially when you’re young.

I think because he feels like it’s resonating with this group and also it’s his last time, I think there’s more of a sense of urgency, so I would say he’s utilizing his voice more.

At this point, I think Coach O’Toole’s reputation precedes itself when it comes to developing a front court. What is it about what he’s been able to do with this current group that’s made them step up and be able to succeed this year?
Capel: Well, T.O. brings great passion every day, as do my other assistants. I think we do a good job of development, period. I think if you look at our track record, for the most part - I’m not saying with everything - but getting guys that are not ranked or low in rankings and you look at their production and how they’ve improved and gotten better. He brings great passion, great energy to them. Not just on the court but for them, for who they are as people. I think they know that he cares deeply about them. Not just what they can do on the basketball court, but he cares deeply about them.

T.O., like my brother and I and like Milan, he grew up with a father that was a coach, and so he grew up seeing the impact that coaches can have on young people, and I think that was his life’s dream, was to be able to be like his dad and have a similar impact. And I think if you look, probably everywhere he’s been, I know he was an assistant at Duke my last two years as a player, and if you look throughout his career at all the places he’s been, I would imagine everyone would say, ‘Man, that guy is really passionate and he cared about me. Not just me as a player and what I could do, but he really cared deeply about me.’ And as a coach, man, that’s the one thing you always want your guys to be able to say, is that, man, this guy really cares about me.