Jeff Capel met the media for a Zoom session on Monday, and here's a full rundown of everything he said.

Do you have a good idea if Jamarius will be able to play tomorrow night?
Capel: There’s a chance that he will; it all depends on how he responds after what we did in practice today. If there are no setbacks, nothing then most likely he’ll play tomorrow.

When you talk about how he responds, I guess that’s how he feels physically, if there is soreness or lingering issues?
Capel: Soreness, swelling, anything that would impact him not being able to feel comfortable playing.

He had a full practice? He did everything?
Capel: Yes.

What will he specifically bring to the team if he does play?
Capel: He’ll give us another ball-handler. He’s a shot-maker. He’s older, so experience, toughness, he can defend, leadership. All of those things.

Dan Oladapo has gone 5-for-5 from the floor this year and gave you some productive minutes against West Virginia; when in the games do you feel like Dan can make the biggest impact for you guys, and what does he bring to the floor?
Capel: Dan played well the other night, did some good stuff for us. He’s gotten better and better as he’s starting to understand more what we need from him. We still want and need him to rebound at a high level; that’s something that’s done throughout his college career. We need that to be part of what he brings to the table for us. But he’s pretty good around the basket, scoring it, he’s got a pretty good touch around there. He’s getting more comfortable with the defensive schemes that we do. At Oakland, they played primarily zone; here we’re playing man-to-man, which is what we’ve primarily done, getting adjusted to that, getting adjusted to guarding away from the basket - just those things. But I’m pleased with some of the things that he’s done so far this year.

Over these past couple days in practices, how much of a focus has there been on preventing turnovers and valuing the ball?
Capel: It’s something that we talk about all the time. Hopefully that was a one-game thing. I think we had four against The Citadel, and obviously we made up for that enough with the next game. But it is something that we’ve talked about, we’ve watched with our guys, that was a big part of the feedback from the West Virginia game. We felt like, when we didn’t turn it over, we got good looks. We just have to be able to be poised and be strong in chaotic situations. That was a chaotic situation for 40 minutes, and we didn’t handle it well. Hopefully we learn from it and get better, and the next time we’re in that position, we do a better job.

Along those lines, do you feel like that will be a valuable experience for this team? Do you believe they’ll grow from that?
Capel: Yeah, I do. There was a lot of good from that game. For all of our guys that suited up that night, that was their first time playing in front of a crowd like that, so that will help us as we go forward. We out-rebounded them; again, when we were strong and valued the ball, we got good looks. We shot 65% in the second half. So we did some good things. I think, those things, we’ll build on, and hopefully we’ll be better because of them.

With a start like this, a disappointing start to the season, what do you see from the guys or look for in the locker room - or is there anything you say or do to make sure guys don’t get discouraged?
Capel: We just have to stick together. Everyone has to do just a little bit more; not a lot more, a little bit more. And we have to stay together. We’ve been playing with a lot of stuff going on, and it severely impacted us with what we had worked on for over a month in preparation for our season. And in a four or five-day period, two of the mainstays from that were gone. And J.B. was already gone. So that left us with two days of preparation to try to figure out, ‘Do we do something different or do we stick with what we’ve done up to this point, offensively and defensively, because of what we lost?’
So we’ve tried to preach strength, we’ve tried to preach being together and fighting. I was proud of how we fought at West Virginia. I’m certainly not proud of the result, but I’m proud of how we fought. And like I said, I know we did some good things. Certainly, we need to get a win; that’s the most important thing and hopefully we can come out tomorrow and be worthy enough to earn the right to win.

What do you see from Wilmington in your scouting so far?
Capel: They pressure the basketball. They’re a little bit smaller so they spread you out, they drive it, try to get paint touches. Their kid Sims has led them in scoring the past two years; he’s a good player. They make about eight three’s a game, so they’re a team that’s hungry and I’m sure will come in here with a lot of confidence. So we have to be ready for the challenge.

You obviously can’t comment on specific recruits but I was curious, in the 2022 class, where you kind of go from here, what positions you prioritize, what skill sets that you have in mind and are looking for?
Capel: Yeah, we want to get a guard, a wing and a big. Just like we talked about, from the beginning that was our mindset. We have three scholarships to give and we want to get a guard, a wing and a big.

How close is William to giving you more offensively? And what might be a little bit off from him being a more impactful offensive player?
Capel: I thought he played a tremendous game the other night. I thought his defense on Sherman was outstanding. To force him into a 6-of-20 night, I thought his antenna was up and even some of those shots, two or three of them were really tough contested shots. I thought him making a three - that was really good. It’s something that Will did in high school: he shot the basketball well. He has not done that here so far, but we know, we see it in practice and it’s just got to translate to games. As he continues to get stronger and continues to improve his handle and hopefully he can start making good shots. As long as he’s taking good shots, I’m okay with it.

You talked about the defense and Will’s defense being better, but after the first game I remember you talking about the switches being off and guys switching to the wrong shooter at different times; did you feel like you guys did that better at West Virginia and do you see your guys communicating better to avoid those mistakes?
Capel: I thought we were a lot better against West Virginia in that. If you take - I mean, it’s a big ‘if;’ you can say ‘if’ for everything - but where we got hurt was transition. Where we got hurt was turning the ball over and giving them points there. I thought our half-court defense was really good that game. But unfortunately it’s not just a half-court defense game. There’s a lot that goes into it. But I do think we showed some growth there.

When you talk with your guys about a game like that, how much do you emphasize that, where you look at losing by 15 but if these things were different, then the outcome might be different, too - how much as a coach do you emphasize that or do you try to not get too caught up in those ‘ifs’?
Capel: We’re trying to get better, so we talk about the things that we can control, which are being strong with the basketball, making good decisions, understanding the personnel and being able to execute that - who’s a shooter, who’s not a shooter, who to rotate to, who not to rotate to, not to leave a shooter to go to a non-shooter, a driver and things like that, trying to make sure our ball-screen coverage is correct. We’re doing the things correctly, but we’ve tried to work on offensively preparation, trying to execute it.
So there are a lot of ‘ifs.’ Even when we win, when we’ve won, we try to point out the things that we did well, the things that we didn’t do, so hopefully we can learn and continue to do the things that we do well. We try to point that out, too. When we went back to the feedback from West Virginia, I showed the things that we did well, when we did execute, when we had poise, when we did make the simple play, look what was open, we got a good look. Sometimes we missed it, but we got a good look. As opposed to, when we didn’t do it, when we caught it and immediately dribbled the basketball instead of catching and seeing, like we talked about doing.

The chaos made us do that. And that’s a credit to them: that’s the way they played, there was unbelievable energy in the building.

We do that all the time. Wins, losses, whatever. We do it when we watch practice. I’ve watched feedback from practice of, if we do this, if we’re able to execute this, this is what should be open. But we have to be able to do that in real time.

Our sport, we can’t huddle up after every possession or every play. We can’t go back and talk about it. We can’t sit on the sideline as an offense when our defense is on the field, talking about it or looking at pictures or things like that. We can’t sit in the dugout and talk. You have to be able to do these things in real time. So we watch tape a lot, we talk about these things a lot, so hopefully they become second nature for our guys, and in real time we’re able to make these plays and make these adjustments and make these reads.

With the two starters that you did lose, who’s stepping up? Who is your on-court leader? Who’s stepping up in the locker room when you guys aren’t around?
Capel: Femi’s done a good job of that. Other guys have tried to step up, but those losses are big losses. J.B. was a big loss, as far as leadership. Now, it’s been awhile so we were able to get somewhat adjusted to life without him. But we knew there was a time when he was able to be back.

When we lost those other two guys, it’s big losses. We had worked on a lot of things offensively, which is different for me in preparation for a season. I came into this season worried about us scoring because of what we lost. So we tweaked some things that we were doing offensively to try to put this group and what we felt like was the strength of this group in the best position to have success. That was all good until two days before the first game - really, a week before when we found out Nike’s injury, and now all of a sudden Ithiel is out. So you come into this season where I felt like the strength of our team was going to be our perimeter and then John. Now, all of a sudden, we’re down to one scholarship guard, one guard that can create.

Those three guys that have been out - obviously Nike is out for the season; hopefully J.B. is back; don’t know about Ithiel’s status, it’s uncertain right now. But those are three guys that have been out that can all shoot the basketball from deep, they can all create offense, they can create things for other guys, they can all defend, they’re all older, they’re all experienced.

So it’s been a tremendous loss for us, and I think our guys have adjusted as well as they could in the time frame that we have. And again, I have seen growth; it hasn’t led to wins, and that’s certainly deflating. But we all have to pick it up a little bit and to figure this thing out, but not go crazy, not feel like you have to re-invent the wheel, so to speak. We just have to be good. Everyone has to be good, everyone has to know their role and everyone has to be able to execute their role in what we’re trying to do.