Jeff Capel talked about another loss, creating energy early in games, the freshmen and more after Wednesday night’s loss to Clemson. Here’s the full rundown of what he said.

Capel: Well, another tough one for us tonight. Congrats to Clemson. They really, really shot the ball well in the first half. They’re an older team, a mature team and a good team. And they’re a veteran team that has a lot of experience from a Sweet Sixteen team last year that has returned. IF they’re making shots like that, they’re going to be very difficult to beat. I wasn’t obviously pleased with our offense or defense, especially our defense in the first half. I thought them making shots like that, I thought that really, really knocked us back even more and their physicality looked a little bit like boys playing against men.

I liked how we fought in the second half. I thought we did some things a lot better. We played all zone; I thought that was a little bit more effective for us because we were more effective in it. The offense left something to be desired but I thought we got some good looks when we moved the ball and the ball didn’t stick. We have to keep fighting, keep getting better, keep working, keep teaching; we’ll continue to do that and we’ll get back at it on Saturday.

You’ve gotten down many times this year and almost every time, the team has found a way to fight back. How do you get them to bring that energy and that intensity at the beginning of the game?
Capel: Yeah, you know, it’s - great question. Certainly, both times we played Clemson, that’s been the thing. I don’t know what it is when we start a game. I just think what happened today and at Clemson is that they made so many shots early and we were dejected. I mean, when the kid banked the three at the end of the shot clock, you could see our guys, their shoulders slumped and things like that. We’re such an immature team that we allow that to affect everything. We miss a shot and that affects the defense. We play decent defense and they bank in a three, that affects the offense. And at times, it takes us awhile to get out of that. That’s where - that’s one of the many areas we have to grow. You have to move onto the next play very quickly. Our sport is not a sport where you huddle after every possession and you go back or there’s in baseball however many seconds between a pitch and things like that, where you have time where you can think about and discuss. Our game is up and down, so you have to be able to make adjustments in real time.

And then the other thing you have to be able to do - and what the good teams with good players do - is that you have convenient amnesia. You move on to the next play and you forget about the past and you concentrate on right now. And we’ve lost that. I think we’ve lost a little bit of confidence. Obviously the losing does that to you. But we have to keep working and keep teaching, and we’ll do that.

It shows something that we are able to continue to fight when we get down and we do fight, but it’s not good that we put ourselves or we are in those situation where we get down like that.

You touched on it some, but given how the game went, how many of your team’s problems right now go beyond fatigue and go beyond that wall we’ve talked about?
Capel: I think it’s fatigue and the wall. Obviously it’s confidence. I mean, it’s a lot of stuff that we’re dealing with. But no one’s going to feel sorry for us. No team that we play, certainly, is going to feel sorry for us and we can’t use that as an excuse. We have to figure out a way to be better in these situations.

Now, again, this is a good team that we played and a veteran team. I mean, they’re - I think they have five graduates on their roster, so it literally is boys playing against men. But there are some things, and I’ve said this from the beginning: the things that we can control, we have to do a better job of controlling those things. I thought we were doing that a little bit earlier in the season and we’ve had some slippage there here recently. So we have to keep working, keep grinding, keep teaching and hopefully we can kind of get over the hump.

The six days off, what kind of impact do you feel like they had and how much did it show itself, if at all, tonight?
Capel: I don’t know. I mean, we didn’t play well tonight, so obviously it had a negative impact. We didn’t play well. That’s the bottom line. I don’t know if that had to do with the six days in between games, in between our last game, or what. The bottom line is that we didn’t play well and we’ll figure it out and try to be better the next time we play.

Trey said that he felt like teams had made some adjustments to him and that he’s got to sort of adjust back; what are you working with him, especially on offense right now?
Capel: I think he’s - his inability to make a shot, I think Trey gets down on himself and he wants to do well so bad and he knows he’s not playing well and he’s hard on himself. And so that right there. Teams aren’t fouling as much. Earlier in the year when he was playing well, he was getting to the line a lot; they made some adjustments and they don’t press up on him maybe as much, give him a little more space. But that’s what happens: you have two 30-point games in your first four conference games, teams are going to make an adjustment. You’re going to become a highlighted guy in a scouting report. You’re going to be one or two; probably at that time he was one and Xavier was two and teams were loading up on those two guys. If you look at it earlier, they were getting to the line a lot. So teams have adjusted. They plug gaps on those two guys; anytime they drive, it’s more than just their defender. It’s a secondary defender, sometimes it’s a third defender that’s coming over and they’re trying to force us to kick it to guys and for guys to make shots. At times, I think they’re playing the percentages, which is smart. So again, it’s not just Trey; we have a lot of guys that have to play better. Period. And we have to help encourage them to play better and continue to work with them so we can play better.

With only three games left in the season, is the biggest jump this team will make be after the season?
Capel: No, because we don’t know what our team is going to be after the season, so we’re concentrating on right now. We’re going to try to get better tomorrow. There were some things that we did today that were pretty good, like Terrell Brown in the second half was pretty good. It was good to see him attack the basket. Now we hopefully can figure out how to turn on the switch so he can be that way all the time. If he finishes and goes up a little bit harder in the first half like he did in the second half, then maybe it’s a different game. I thought Au’Diese did some good things. I thought Malik did some good things.

So again, we’re not looking for after the season. We’re concentrating on right now. Since I’ve been here, that’s been the thing: we’re going to try to concentrate on each day and get better each day. That’s what we’re going to try to do.

With reclassifying becoming much more commonplace, how much does that change the way a coach goes about recruiting or evaluating?
Capel: I don’t think it’s just that. The landscape of college basketball has changed. The graduate transfer has changed it. There are a lot more transfers, period. There are kids that are able to transfer and get a waiver and play right away. So how you look to identify talent and get talent is very different. Certainly, reclassifying is something that some kids are doing. But a lot of kids are reclassifying in high school; they’re getting help.

So you just try to figure out the best way, whatever your philosophy is to try to improve your program each year.

Does it take a certain type of guy or a certain type of personality to make that kind of jump? And what in Trey and Au’Diese did you see when you were considering adding them?
Capel: We needed talent. Point blank. Period. That was it. We needed talent. And we needed some guys that we felt like could come in here right away and play. It was difficult in the sense that you didn’t really get to evaluate them much, so I’m not going to sit up here and lie - I didn’t know those two kids. I didn’t really know much about them. When I took the job, I heard about Trey, I heard about Au’Diese; I had never seen those guys play.

I got tape on Trey - I never saw him play live, I got tape on him, I thought he was really good, I talked to some people that I trusted and they talked about how good he was, he had upside. I went down and met with him and we took a gamble. We thought he’d be good and he’s been good.

Au’Diese, I did have a chance to see him because he was out on the circuit in April; his thing was that he wasn’t for sure that he was going to reclassify. When I saw him, I liked him. I thought he was tough, I thought he was competitive, I thought he won, I thought he just did things to win. Since he’s come here, he’s had to play a little bit out of position. He’s had to guard fours so he’s played against bigger guys and I think he’s done a good job for the season.

Again, for us at that moment, we needed talent. We needed an influx of talent. And we got very fortunate that we were able to get those three high school kids to join our program. Two of them - Trey didn’t take an official visit before he committed, Xavier never took an official visit and then Au’Diese in three hours on his official visit, he committed. So we were fortunate. We got lucky. We were very fortunate. It’s worked out well for us and we think those three guys have a chance to be a great part of the foundation that we’re building.