Capel's culture change

Jeff Capel walked into a tough situation when he accepted the head coaching job at Pitt back in March. He inherited a team that had gone 0-18 in ACC play last season, the fan base was down on the program and almost the entire roster was contemplating transfers.

Capel quickly went to work. He retained most of the team’s roster, quickly put together a more than respectable recruiting class and added a quality graduate transfer to bolster the roster.

That was the easy part.

Now he has to change the team's mindset and he has to start winning back fans. It seems the team is starting to buy in first.

“As I’ve gotten to know these guys I think they are a group of guys that are hungry to be good,” Capel said. “I think they understand that it’s a process in order to take the necessary steps to make that happen and we have to go through that process.”

Part of that process was to identify some leadership. Jared Wilson-Frame is the lone returning senior on the roster, and Capel had to get his attention first and foremost. In the few months since Capel’s hire, Wilson-Frame said there is more of an excitement around the team and program than last year.

“There’s definitely a little more excitement, just around the city period,” he said. “You see on social media and you hear when you’re walking down the streets - there’s definitely just a little more excitement all around the program period.”

Added junior forward Malik Ellison, “I think it was a very tough year for me individually, just for the whole organization and also the school,” Ellison said of last season. “I think with Coach Capel being here brings a new face to this program and just having new guys. We have highly touted freshmen coming in and we have guys like me who haven’t played yet so I think it’s going to be great for the fans and Pittsburgh in general, I think this year is going to be a big year.”

Pitt was a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament back in 2011 and spent much of the year ranked in the top five. The program made the Tournament three times since then as well. Still, those days feel far off to many. Sophomore Khameron Davis grew up in Colorado and wasn’t even aware of Pitt’s long run of success.

“I had no idea about anything about this program, I’m not going to lie,” Davis said. “I really liked the family feel, I really liked how tough the city was - that’s why I came here, but I didn’t know like the history and like the banners we have there.”

It may be a couple of seasons until Pitt can add to the banners hanging above the Petersen Events Center floor, but Capel’s goal for this season is improvement. He said he rarely, if ever brings up last season around his team.

“Just to try to get better everyday,” Capel said of his team goals for this season. “Just to try to improve everyday, to try to understand the importance of each day, understand how to work to get to a point where we’ve earned the right to be good.”

So before Pitt can run, so to speak, it needs to be able to walk. If Pitt ever wishes to have the success it had throughout much of the 2000’s, the culture needed to change, and for some players that were on the team last season, they can see it happening already.

“Everyday he preaches winning, like finding a way to win,” Davis said of Capel’s coaching style. “I’m mad today because I didn’t win everything I was in and that’s only because Capel has been instilling that in us.”