Capel on why he came to Pitt, the challenges he has faced and a lot more

Jeff Capel talked on Monday about why he came to Pitt, the challenges he has faced since taking over the program, his feelings on the Duke head coaching job and a lot more.

Here's the full rundown of everything he said.

Looking at Duke and their numbers and everything, it looks like their strength is on the board. So after having a tough showing against Clemson on Saturday in the paint, how do you prepare for a matchup like this?
Capel: Well, we have to be more physical than we were last game. We have to gang rebound, we have to block out and we have to fight for position in the paint. We have to play post defense before they get it and then we have to do a better job of keeping guards out of the paint.

Being more physical, is that difficult to do when you’re trying to stay out of the foul trouble that you guys have been in?
Capel: It is. It is. I’ve watched them some; they’re not as physical as Clemson. They’re big, but they’re not as physical. Young is; he’s an older guy. So again, Clemson’s the most physical team we’ve played all year.

You’ve talked a lot this season about communication. Does the noise factor at Cameron Indoor make things a lot more difficult when it comes to communicating in a game like this?
Capel: It will. Their team will. They’re talented. They’re good. But certainly, that is a factor. Playing in a hostile environment, it will be loud in there. It will be an energetic crowd. I’m pretty sure their students are back and maybe the first game that they’re back with school back in session. So yeah, it will be loud. So it’s very, very important for us to communicate.

In a way, do you anticipate this being the most hostile environment you’ve played in so far this year?
Capel: I don’t know. I mean, it’s a great home court. I thought Syracuse was tough, especially as they started making the run. I thought it was loud. It’s bigger. Cameron is smaller and they’re right on top of you. So it probably will be, so far.

Some of the things that have been staples of Duke basketball - defense, togetherness, toughness - the things that I guess you’ve tried to instill here at Pitt. You’re probably going to see some of those same things in this Duke program. How much do you feel like that’s a matchup that these teams could be similar in terms of the mentality?
Capel: Well, I think there probably are some similarities. Some of the terminology is probably the same. Jon and I both played for Coach, so the things that we were taught, that were instilled in us, they’re things that we probably both really believe in. You know, the way a game should be played and a team should be. He had a lot of success as a player there. I had some success there as a player. We both worked there. So there will be some similarities, but there will also be some differences. Jon has done a good job of putting his imprint on the program in his first year. Very difficult task, but you can see it. And I’d like to think that I’ve done some things my way as well here and at other places I’ve been.

After the Virginia game, Tony was in here talking and he said, ‘I’m happy for Jeff and I don’t know his guys that well,’ which I thought was sort of telling. Your starting five that night had 88 starts combined at Pitt. He has Clark, who was making 120. I know that’s the portal nature of team-building these days; how have you been able to get this group to do this so quickly, for lack of a better phrase?
Capel: I give all the credit to them. I mean, they’ve just come together. We didn’t get together as a group, as a team, until the start of the fall semester. We’re normally together in July, but we had several guys that were not here for different reasons, so the first time we were all together was the end of August. So that’s something I worried about. But once we got together, it was pretty obvious right away that the pieces fit. I think with having some older guys and them having a maturity about them and being all about winning, I think that helps. When you go through some adversity or things, you know, like we went through earlier, that helps. It can either make you or break you, and I think it’s helped us become closer. I think it helped us to understand how much we need each other. And our guys have done a good job of continuing to grow in that manner throughout this part of the season.

You mentioned the maturity. There’s been a couple times during your tenure, very specifically after you guys beat Duke a couple years ago, Justin said you’re back or whatever. But you have a lot of guys that have been around and played a lot of ball. Does that give you comfort or optimism that the second-half struggles that have popped up, you’ll be able to navigate them a little better?
Capel: It doesn’t give me comfort. I’m not comfortable. I am optimistic. I’m hopeful that all of us can learn from the past, you know, the guys - we don’t have anyone that was on that team two years ago that you were talking about. We were 4-1. But all of us have different experiences, whether it’s Greg from Marquette, Nelly at Colgate, Blake’s experiences at Ole Miss and at Iowa State. We all have experience. JB at Texas Tech and at Wichita. Good and bad. They’ve told me some stuff, teams that they’ve been a part of that they’ve experienced and they learned. So the thing we’ve talked about is, bring all those experiences with us, good and bad, and let’s learn from them and let’s try not to let that happen here.

Is there any update on John at all?
Capel: Nope.
So with his situation continuing to go the way it is, is there an urgency on either end to try to get him back on the court, or is the focus on fixing the issue at hand, whatever it is?
Capel: The focus is fixing - making sure he’s okay, making sure he’s good, physically, mentally and a space that he can play and help us.

Is it injury-related?
Capel: No.

Is there a chance we won’t see him back for the rest of the year?
Capel: I don’t know.

Jon Scheyer said today that he doesn’t expect Jeremy Roach to play for them on Wednesday. What do they lose, what does he bring that they won’t have?
Capel: Well, he’s a guy that played and played a lot, so his experience. He’s played in big games and big moments. He’s a really good player. But they have other really good players, talented players. They were able to go on the road and win at Boston College, which is hard. It’s hard to win on the road in this league, and they did that. Other guys stepped up. But Jeremy’s a talented young guy. Obviously, he has experience and has played in big moments. A guy that played in the Final Four, started in the Final Four, for goodness sakes, so he’s a good player.

What about Kyle Filipowski? A freshman but a unique player, categorized as a big four but he’s got guard-like skills. What does he bring?
Capel: Really talented, great size, great energy, plays with great spirit, competitive, it seems like watching him on tape. I saw him a lot in high school - I should say in AAU - so I have some familiarity with his game. But he’s certainly gotten better since that summer on the circuit. He can drive it, he can get it off the glass and push it, he’s skilled, he can step out and make the shot, he can post. He’s a very unique player and a really talented young guy and has gotten off to a good start for them.

What does JB mean to this team?
Capel: He means a lot. He does a lot for us. He’s older, leadership, toughness, physicality, intelligence, experienced, leadership - all of those things. He’s done a really good job of, really, in all of those buckets for us.

Is there a calmness about him that you hope rubs off on guys?
Capel: Yeah, there’s a maturity with him. He’s a man. And he’s experienced a lot, he’s been through a lot and he has a quiet belief in himself, and he has a really calm and stoic but competitive demeanor. And he’s a guy that’s about the right stuff.

One of your colleagues said it took some guts to jump for this job when you did, given the state of where Pitt was. How much, when you go back to Cameron, do you kind of - especially with where the state of the program is right now, given what you’ve experienced here the last few years - how much do you feel like you made the right move, and can going back to where you started give you a reminder of, okay, we’re where we want to be or we’re on the path to where we want to be?
Capel: Well, I know I made the right move. Look, I knew when I took this, it was going to be a difficult task. I understood where the program was and there were a lot of factors with that. It wasn’t one thing. I know there was one thing that was blamed or one person that was blamed, and that’s not it. There were a lot of things. One person doesn’t make a program; one person doesn’t break a program. And so I understood it. I understood it even more when I got here. It’s like, you don’t know a place or you don’t know a person until you’re with them all the time, and when I got here, you start to understand, you start to see.

I think one of the biggest factors is that it’s a new neighborhood. It was in a new neighborhood. It wasn’t the Big East. It was the ACC. When I took the job here, I was shocked, I mean absolutely shocked, that first month, first few months, when I would talk to kids, talk to AAU coaches, talk to the kids’ parents, recruits, I mean, and they had no idea Pitt was in the ACC. This is not, like, national. This is, you know, Ohio kids or neighboring states. So I knew it was going to be difficult. When I got here, it was almost the end of the school year and the recruiting cycle, as far as available guys - so I understood that.

The job, when you look at it, in the four years prior to me coming, of Pitt being in the ACC, I’m the third coach and Heather’s the third AD, so there wasn’t a lot of stability. After Year Two, the world changed with Covid. You play a season the next year where you have no fans. You go from March of 2020 to July of 2021 where we can do no off-campus recruiting and we can’t have people here. One of the first things I learned when I took this job, after being here for a little bit, is we have to get kids on campus. Most people have never been to Pittsburgh, so most people have an opinion of what they think Pittsburgh is. I know I did before I moved here, and it’s nothing like I imagined it or thought it would be. So we had that period where we couldn’t have anyone here.

Once that was over with, the landscape of college athletics changed with one-time transfers. And then you introduce NIL. So it’s just all these things in a four-year period that happened, two of which - three of which, you didn’t anticipate that made the job even more difficult.

But I never questioned whether I made the right decision. I never did that. I felt like I made the right decision. I never had a dream job when I got into coaching. My dream was to coach in the ACC. I believed in this program. I knew the history of it. I believed in Heather and Chancellor Gallagher. But most importantly, or just as important, I should say, I believed in me and what we could do. It’s been hard. It’s been difficult. It’s been a lot of setbacks. It’s been a lot of that. But we’re still here, we’re still swinging and we’re trying to get better each day and we’re fighting. I really like the group of guys that we have. I really like the three young men that we’ve signed and I really look forward to our future.

You mentioned not being able to have the team as a whole together until August. Did you do anything out of the ordinary to sort of accelerate the team-building because there was a shorter window between getting together and the start of the season?
Capel: I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, but we did some things that we weren’t able to do because of Covid in that two-year period. There are things that you do to try to organically help the team-building process. For a year or a little bit over a year, we couldn’t do those things because of Covid.

The only thing we did different from years past when we were able to do those things is, we had a few more team-building meetings. One of the guys on my staff came up with the concept of having these meetings based on words and really bringing something up, having the guys send in a picture of one of the favorite moments of their life, and then we’d all get together and the picture would flash up on the screen and the guy would get up, you know, two, three minutes and talk about that moment. So it was a way for us to get to know each other, them to get to know, to see someone besides just as a teammate or a basketball player.

That’s really it. We took a trip to D.C., but we did that my first year. We did another trip somewhere, I think my second year. The last two years, we weren’t able to do anything because of Covid. That’s really it.

Given the nature, because of the portal, because there’s so much movement, is that stuff even more vital to try to get guys to play for each other?
Capel: Yeah, that’s all we’ve talked about. Now, we’ve talked about it in the past, too, but it seems to have resonated with this group of guys. And we’ve done that. We’ve done that. We got punched in the mouth early and we lost those three games in a row, but we never wavered. We kept fighting, we stuck together and we’ve gotten better. We need to respond to a loss now. The last time we had a loss was Vanderbilt, and we responded. Hopefully we can get off the mat this time, and certainly the opponent is different, we won’t be at home. It’s no disrespect to the opponent we played after Vanderbilt and I wish them luck, but this is different. We’re going to play at Duke, one of the most tradition-laden programs and best programs in college athletics. So it’s a big-time opportunity for us.

When you have three days to stew over a loss, how do you transition into the next practice? Is it, immediately forget about it? Is it, take the time to learn from that loss? How do you go about that process?
Capel: What we do as a team - we were off yesterday because you have to, per NCAA rules, you get a day off. And then we got back together and what we always do: we give feedback from the last game. We talk about it, we see some good that we did, we talk about what we can get better with, some teaching points, and then once that’s over with, we flush it. It’s over with. And then we move on. We move on with our preparation for the next game. So that’s what we did.

Duke is one of the better rebounding teams in the ACC; I think they lead in offensive rebounds. When it comes to the style and preparing for a team like that that can crash the glass, is there a challenge to adjusting your own style, maybe some of what the players might be able to do in their own tendencies in order to combat that?
Capel: No. We’re going to be us. We have to rebound. We have to do that. We have to block out. They have two guys, Filipowski and Young, I think, have 90 offensive rebounds between the both of them. That’s a lot. But the other guys, Mitchell, Lively, they’re big, they’re long, they’re athletic, so we have to do a good job with being physical and blocking out. We have to gang rebound. Our guards are going to have to stick their nose in there and get some rebounds.

When you talk about flushing a loss, do you think having a mature group helps that?
Capel: I hope so. I mean, it’s - I hope so. I hope so.

Would you say maturity is the biggest difference between this group and the ones you’ve had in the past? I know you don’t like looking and comparing too much, but this has to be your most mature group you’ve had here.
Capel: Yeah, it is. It’s definitely the most mature. We’re older. I think we have more depth, more quality depth than we’ve had in the past. But definitely mature.

You mentioned the 2023 class that you guys brought in for the future. They all got to come to the game this weekend. What was that like for you to see them all in the building for a Pitt basketball game for the first time?
Capel: It was great. It was awesome. Especially for them to be here with a crowd like that and the energy back in the building. It was awesome to have them. I got to spend some time with them and their families after the game. And I think it was really good for them to see, like in person, how physical this league is and to see how hard you have to play. All three of those young guys are talented and I think they have big upside and I think they have a chance to be really, really good players. But they have to understand it’s a process and I don’t think any of the three are afraid of the process. I think they look forward to it and look forward to the work that it’s going to take to become the players that we know they want to be.

You mentioned that you’ve never had a dream job, but you and Jon were both assistants under K and there was a lot of speculation as he neared retirement, who would be the guy who succeed him - Chris Collins and Wojo and Hurley, all these guys who were head coaches. How much did your belief in yourself allow you to step outside and say, ‘I’m going to go pursue the Pitt job’ as opposed to waiting to see if you’d be the next Duke coach? How much of that was what you said about believing in yourself?
Capel: I never had thoughts of being the next Duke coach. When I was there, I never thought about it. I tried to be the best assistant coach I could for Coach and for the program. I understood my role. I was never caught up in titles. I remember when Coach asked me to come back there and he said, ‘Wojo and Chris are both associate head coaches; I can’t name you that.’ I was like, ‘I don’t care; we’re all assistant coaches.’ It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t know if that was because I’d already been a head coach for nine years, but I’ve never been caught up in that, and when I was there, I never had visions, never thought once about being the next coach there. I tried to be the best assistant coach I could for him and for the program and for the guys in the program. I tried to serve them.

I had opportunities during the seven years I was there at different places and I looked. There were a couple that I actually talked to, interviewed for. Three, in particular, that I kind of got down the road with, but in the end, I didn’t feel like it was right for me and my family. And all three of them, Coach was involved with them. He was someone that I leaned on and I talked to about it. And when this opportunity presented itself, it was different because it was the ACC. That was the difference. It was the ACC. I’d always dreamed about coaching in this league and I understood after being in this profession that it was never going to happen at a traditional ACC school, because I was a Duke guy, so it wasn’t going to happen at the teams that were always - you know, the Virginia, it wasn’t going to happen. Virginia, Wake, N.C. State, all of those schools - certainly not Carolina. But any of those schools. So I understood that. So when this job opened and they called and they came after me, that was the attraction. And then the more I learned about it, I felt like this was the opportunity.

You mentioned what Pitt was versus what you thought it was. Can you give us an idea of what perception versus reality was when you got here?
Capel: Well, I mean - what I mean by that is, I had been here as a visiting coach, okay? I thought the Pete was very, very nice, was a really good home court advantage and really nice arena. It actually had one of the best visiting locker rooms in the ACC. So I just anticipated and thought that all of the other stuff would be like that. And what I mean, I called it the underbelly when I got here. So the players locker room and lounge, a film room, just all of those things, the practice gym, I had never seen any of that stuff. And when I had the press conference and I walked around and I saw those things, they were not up to par what it takes in this league. They just weren’t. There was a locker room and I guess you would call it a player lounge. We didn’t have a film room. The practice facility, it was just - I called it an auxiliary gym. It was just a gym. The lead-up to it was not good, like, as you’re walking up to it, it was not appealing to the eye. It just didn’t have those things. I understood the year before, them being 0-18, 0-19 if you count the ACC Tournament game, the margin of victory, so I understood and again, I say this and it’s not a knock on anyone, but I understood that we had to improve the talent level. I understood that. I didn’t know that being in a new neighborhood - like, I didn’t know the effect of that. I didn’t realize that it had been three coaches in four years, I was the third coach in four years or Heather was the third athletic director. I didn’t realize that instability. I didn’t realize how important it would be to be able to get people on campus because of the perception that probably people had of Pittsburgh. Whether right or wrong, that’s the reality of it.

I would say about 98% of the kids we’ve brought in for visits since I’ve been here, at some point during the official visit, the kid and/or their parents say, ‘This is nothing like I thought it would be.’ And they’re not talking just about the university; they’re talking about the city. Because it’s a really, really cool city and I love being able to show people around. But you don’t know that unless you’re here.

That’s what I thought. That’s exactly what I thought. And it’s nothing like that. So that’s what I mean, just the - I knew the basketball program. I knew the old Big East days, I the Dejuan Blairs and the Carl Krausers are the Brandin Knights, that crew. I knew that. I knew the Charles Smiths and the 80’s, I knew that. I knew the history. I knew that every year when you’d get, whether it was the Street & Smith magazine, ESPN used to do a magazine with college basketball or when Sports Illustrated used to do it, all these things, there would be a thing in there of the top home courts. This was one of them. The top student section. This was always in the top five in both. I knew that. So I knew the history and the tradition and the championships and this was one of the hardest places to play and teams didn’t really come in here and win. I knew all of that, so that’s what appealed to me, because I knew it was there so I thought we could get - if it’s been there, you can get it back. I didn’t fully grasp how difficult that was. And then especially - and again, it’s not an excuse, it’s an explanation - when you throw those other things of a global pandemic, name, image and likeness and one-time transfer all within a three-year period. That makes things a little bit more difficult.

You mentioned some of the blue bloods when you were saying, ‘I knew I couldn’t get a job here or there because I’m a Duke guy.’ When you look at the standings right now, I understand it’s January 9, I understand that, but it’s Clemson, it’s you guys, it’s non-traditional, at least in terms of being in the ACC powers. It seems like the league’s not as top-heavy as it typically is. Is that something that the coaches view as well, that maybe it’s a little more wide open than it has been?
Capel: I just think it’s the nature of college basketball now. I think the landscape of college basketball - I know college athletics, but college basketball has changed. There’s a lot more parity than it used to be. You’ve got some teams that are older, you have some older guys, you have some teams that have been able to go out in the portal and get some guys that have been able to come in and really help them and things like that. Some of these quote-unquote blue blood programs, they’re still relying on freshmen. Talented freshmen, but if you can get old and have some experience, that’s a little bit different. Unless you’re Zion or RJ Barrett or Paolo or whatever, an 18-year-old and a 22-year-old, that’s a big difference. So I just think there’s more parity in college basketball, period, from top to bottom.

When you’re pitching guys, when you’re talking to guys in the portal thinking about coming here, is that the pitch: we can do this quickly if we get the right group together?
Capel: We just talked about opportunity. Opportunity to play, opportunity to be good, opportunity to do something special, to rebuild something, to get the University, the students, the city back behind this program how it once was. That’s what we talked about. We talked about how I thought we could be good and get the right pieces and we fit and we’re about the right stuff, we can do that with the guys we have coming back and that we thought it could be a good mix. You know, we can make our way in the league. So we did talk about that.