12/8/2018 basketball Edit

Capel on the loss, the turnovers, young guards and more

Chris Peak • Panther-lair

Publisher

MORGANTOWN, W.V - After Pitt's 69-59 loss to West Virginia on Saturday, Jeff Capel spoke to the media and here's a full rundown of what he said.

Capel: I’m proud of my team. I thought we fought, I thought we competed and I thought we battled. Congrats to West Virginia. I thought they did the same thing. It was a hard-fought game, a very physical game, obviously a very emotional game. At the end of the day, we have to minimize our mistakes and we have to be able to get the ball. We have to be able to value the ball and we have to be able to go get the ball. I thought those were the things that did us in this afternoon. But I am proud of how we fought and how we competed. I felt like we put ourselves in a position where we had opportunities. We have to be able to capitalize on those a little bit more.”

We can’t simulate their size, their athleticism, their length. We don’t have those types of guys right now. We work against it. We do what we can do. We practice against the physicality, knowing they’re going to go after the basketball, so there’s going to be contact and we have to be able to play through contact. I thought at times we did that. I thought at times we didn’t have the poise necessary. That’s where we have to get better and grow as a team.

West Virginia is always going to force a lot of errors, but did it feel to you like a lot were unforced?
Capel: They haven’t forced a lot of errors this year. That’s not this year’s team, West Virginia team. I thought some of them were forced; I thought some of them were unforced. We had some travels. We cut it to five, we got a defensive rebound and we tried to outlet to our center, so that’s unforced. So again, this West Virginia team is different from previous teams, certainly last year’s team; they’re not forcing as many turnovers as they have, but they certainly did today

Again, some of it was them, some of it was us. I’m probably sure Huggs would say the same thing, because we forced them into 27 or 26. So it was an ugly game, a sloppy game from that standpoint, but I thought it was two teams that battled and competed like heck against each other.

Xavier had some spectacular moments and then some like the behind-the-back when you turned to the scorer’s table. It was sort of up and down. Do you live with that with a talented young guy?
Capel: We have to live with it. I thought, in that situation to start the second half, I thought he was playing like he was hurt. You know, he took a hard fall in the first half, landed on his back, went out and obviously had some pain. But as a young guy, you have to learn to play through the pain. You have to fight through it. Either you can play or you can’t play, and if you’re out there, you have to be able to push through it. I thought, in that instance, to start, I thought he wasn’t himself, and he came back to the bench, we took him out and I thought he played pretty good basketball for the rest of the game.

Look, you have to live with some of the mistakes that he makes. We’re a young backcourt, we’re an inexperienced backcourt, but I’ll tell you what: I wouldn’t trade them for anyone, those two guys. Our guys compete, they fight, they battle and they’re going to get better and better.

What did you need to happen on offense to get some guys other than Xavier and Trey going?
Capel: We had to attack their pressure without turning the ball over, in the full court and the half court, and then we needed to make shots. We had some good looks at times. I thought Jared Wilson-Frame got some really good looks. We just couldn’t make them. But that’s what their pressure does to you sometimes: they speed you up. And going forward, when we’re playing teams like this, we have to be able to have the poise to be able to knock those shots down when we have the opportunities.

Did it feel like a rivalry?
Capel: Sure.

How so?
Capel: I mean, it’s a rivalry. They’ve been playing this game forever. There’s a lot of emotion in the game so, yeah.

On Monday night when you talked about rebounding, you talked about effort and focus. You got outrebounded today, but did you feel like the effort was better?
Capel: I thought it was better. We just have to go after the ball. For us, at times, we still stand and watch, and it’s almost like we think someone else is going to get it. And we don’t have a guy that’s a double-figure rebounder. I’ve coached a guy that led the country in rebounding. I coached two guys last year as an assistant last year and we had two guys that averaged double-doubles. So when you have that, you can leak out. We still have guys at times leaking out. We have to gang rebound, all five guys, and the faster we learn that, every time - and what it is, is changing habits. It’s changing habits. The young guys don’t have the habits yet and the returning guys don’t have them because it’s not something they did last year. They weren’t a good rebounding team last season. So that’s something that we have to continue to work on and get better.

I thought the effort was better today to do that. But we still have pursue the basketball and go get it.

With gang rebounding, in terms of how your guys embrace it, how far in that process do you feel like you are?
Capel: Yeah, we’re not close. We’re not close. I mean, we’re getting outrebounded so we’re not close. We have to keep getting better.

There were a lot of fouls in the game; was the game too physical?
Capel: That’s your judgment. You know what, the game was what it was. And the game was very physical, but the game was what it was.

You alluded to the fact that Bob’s had to do some different things defensively. What did you expect to see from West Virginia defensively in this game?
Capel: I knew they’d pressure. We felt like they’d try to keep the ball out of X’s hands and they did that at times. At the end they went to a little 1-3-1. But they were very aggressive, very physical; they attack. They keep bringing bodies in and keep coming after you.

Are you happy with what you saw from your own team when you put on a full-court press?
Capel: I was happy with the way we fought. I was happy with the way we competed. We just have to be a little bit smarter. You know, coming into the game, we knew West Virginia was averaging a lot of turnovers, so we felt like we could put pressure. We tried it in the first half and we didn’t do a good job; we weren’t aggressive in it and we didn’t go to the right spots. In the second half, we did a better job. We forced them into some turnovers, we were able to get back and put a little game pressure on them.

For us, we have to minimize all of our mistakes. We have to minimize as many things - our margin for error is very, very low. We have to protect the ball, we have to value it and we have to go get it, and we didn’t do those two things at a reasonable level this afternoon to put ourselves in position to win. And with that, we still had opportunities.

What do you tell your young guards when they go up and get stuffed by Konate, who’s one of the best shot-blockers in the country?
Capel: Keep attacking. Keep attacking.

Do you want to see this series continue beyond where the contract currently stands?
Capel: You know, I don’t know where the contract currently stands but sure. Sure.