Recruiting in a pandemic

The emergency dead period has changed recruiting this spring, and Pitt basketball coach Jeff Capel has been adjusting to the changes. He spoke to the Panther-Lair Show podcast about the changes and what it’s like to recruit in a pandemic, and here’s a full rundown of what he said.

What have the last couple weeks been like for you?
Capel: It’s been different. It’s been good but it’s just been different. It’s been good in the sense - we are very fortunate that we can get our families together, everyone’s healthy, knock on wood, so we’re good there. Trying to keep my kids, my 12-almost-13-year-old, my 10-year-old, my 7-year-old, trying to keep them sane, trying to keep them to not drive us crazy, especially my wife. You become a teacher now and all of these different things. So just trying to do that.

Work-wise, really what we’re on is an extended dead period. In our sport, we have different times where we can be out. The dead period is one where you can’t go out, you can’t have any kids on campus, and that’s what we’re in. That part’s difficult, especially for this extended period of time and this time of year because you have an opportunity to get kids in for official visits, unofficial visits, you have an opportunity to go do home visits, to see them, to continue to cultivate relationships that you’ve already built. That part’s difficult. You’ve had to be creative. A lot of Zoom meetings, especially trying to get people to see your place, especially if they haven’t been there before. So you’ve had to get creative there.

The hardest part is being away from my guys. That’s the hardest part. This week, especially right now, is when we really would have ramped things up with our postseason development program and all of those things like that. That’s been the hardest part: not being able to be with them, not being able to sit down face-to-face with them, to see how they’re doing. We’ve had to do all of those meetings via FaceTime and things like that. We have a weekly team meeting now, every Wednesday, a Zoom that we get together, just so guys can see each other and talk and have some fun. I try to give them updates on stuff that I’m hearing here or stuff that I’m hearing across the country, what’s going on with this pandemic, but just to catch up, just to have fun. We’ll do some sort of activity, we’ll check in academically on how they’re doing; that’s going on just about every day, the communication is still there. But it’s different not being able to physically be with them day-to-day.

Do you still give those guys things to do? Film to watch or send them strength stuff to work on, conditioning, that kind of thing?
Capel: We do. That’s one of the things where you tried to be proactive and try to be creative - those situations of what to do, what to give them, what can we watch. It’s just so different because no one really has access to a gym. So you have to be creative with some of the things you do working out. One of the things I’ve told them is, if you have a ball, then there’s an opportunity for you to get better. You may not have a basket to shoot on but you can do ball-handling. You can do that every day. I remember when I was little and I was growing up, especially when it was really cold or it was inclement weather, I would have my parents pull the cars out of the garage and I’d just go in there and just bring a boom box in and have a workout. I’d have a jump rope and have a ball and ball-handle and jump rope and just do things like that; you can do those things.

But yes, we talk about all of those things: film, trying to give them some stuff to watch, to study, to pick their brain about that. Just different things, trying to continue to do team-building stuff when we’re not physically together.

You talked about recruiting, and it seems like the popular buzzword now is “virtual visit” and “virtual tour.” What does that look like? How have you approached giving these guys a virtual visit of Pitt when you can’t even go on campus to show them around? What does a virtual visit look like?
Capel: You’re just doing pictures or videos of your facilities, of the things that you have: your facilities, your living situation, the campus, all of those things. We’ve tried to work closely with admissions, because it’s not just us: it’s the university as a whole that’s doing the same thing, so to talk to them about what they’re doing, to get some ideas from them about what they’re doing. I’ve tried to talk to friends of mine in the business to see, just to get ideas, because it’s just such a different time right now. For us, as coaches, it’s not something that you’re used to.

One of the things - I think a big mistake that’s happened, and I wish or I hope the NCAA does this, is when you do these Zoom calls or these Zoom video meetings, virtual meetings, the NCAA has come back and said that it’s only coaches that can be on it, the head coach and the assistant coaches. I think that’s wrong because one of the people that’s very, very important is your strength coach, and the fact that he can’t be on the call - if a kid came on campus for an official or unofficial visit, he would be able to meet with him and do all of those things.

And then the other thing is that most coaches - I’m a younger head coach still; even though I have a lot of experience, I’m still on the younger side - a lot of head coaches are not tech savvy. So trying to set up these things and do these things without your video guy or your ops guy or someone that normally is doing that stuff for you can be challenging. But again, we’ve all learned how to adapt. I think that’s one thing that you have to be when you’re a coach is that you have to have the ability to adapt.

So you couldn’t even have academic advisors and people from the academic side on a Zoom call with a recruit right now?
Capel: No.

That’s a big part of a visit, right?
Capel: That’s the part that I mean. It’s not common sense. I was talking to a parent of a kid yesterday and I was explaining that because we were trying to get him connected with our academic advisor. He has to call - the kid or the parents have to call; the advisor can’t call him. Trying to figure out, can it be Zoom? Can it be FaceTime? I was explaining to him the rules. I said, ‘Look, they don’t make sense but the rules are the rules so this is what we have to do.’ And he was like, ‘Well Coach, they should really allow you to do like two Zoom visits; you can do one like a home visit where it’s just the coaches and you can do one like an official visit, because if we were on an official visit, we’d be able to meet with them face-to-face and do all of that stuff.’

I told him, ‘What you just said makes sense. It’s common sense.’ Unfortunately, sometimes the people in power to make these decisions don’t use common sense. So that part is difficult, because you’re trying to - as you get to a part of strength and conditioning and how we’re going to help your development in that area, that’s not my expertise or my assistants’ expertise. You hire someone to do those things and we have someone that’s really good, but unfortunately, he can’t be on those calls.

So we have to rely on giving the kid his number and hopefully they reach out to our strength coach and they can do that. Again, it’s just trying to adjust and trying to figure all this stuff out.

It’s really happening at a rough time of year for transfers or senior recruits who are still on the board; how difficult do you think it is for those guys, how much do you feel for those guys that will probably have to pick a school without ever visiting?
Capel: Yeah, I feel for them, the seniors that are still trying to make decisions, but especially the transfers, because normally when you transfer, you’re looking for something better than where you left. A lot of times, relationships and things like that are something that you’re looking for, a connection and stuff, so you’re not going to have an ability to go to a campus and see a strength coach, see all these different things.

A lot of times when a kid transfers, it’s not necessarily about a locker room or anything like that; it’s normally about, ‘Am I going to play?’ or ‘Can I get better here? Can you help me get better quickly?’ So it’s difficult. It’s difficult. You look at the high school kids; I feel for them. A lot of them, they won’t have prom, they won’t have graduation, like a normal graduation. If you haven’t made a decision and you’re still looking, trying to figure it out, you won’t have a chance to take visits.

One of the things that’s become popular is kids reclassifying. So you have some juniors that are graduating early and they won’t be able to take those visits. Juniors can take official visits right now; you won’t have an opportunity to do that. So I do feel for them, especially the older ones, the seniors and the transfers, because they won’t have an opportunity to do that.

What would be the timeline? Is there a cut-off date where you need to get guys on campus? Or if this dead period ends on May 31, would you have a window where you could get some guys on campus for visits in June? Or is it too late at that point?
Capel: It just depends on what a kid decides. Obviously, for us, any coach - the sooner, the better. The sooner, the better. But my thing is that I’d never want to pressure a kid. I want them to want us as much as we want them, the guys that we really want.

Look, the bottom line is that, right now, the only thing that matters - and I love my job and I try to do a heck of a job doing it - but the thing that matters most, man, is everybody being safe. The basketball part will take care of itself and our roster and all of that stuff. But everyone needs to take what’s going on seriously. Whatever the rules are, as far as when you can come back and things like that, the people that are knowledgeable about this will put us in the best position and we have to adjust to that. Everyone will adjust to it. I think everything will be on an even playing field around the country in our sport. So whenever we’re able to get back, we’re able to get back.

Normally, for us, I give the guys an option to go home the first session of summer school. The first session of summer school starts usually around that first week of May. We have some guys that will stay both sessions. We have some guys that would go home. So we have our whole team here second session summer school, which normally starts that last week of June. If we’re able to get them back for that, that would be great. That would be fine. If we’re not, then we’ll figure it out and we’ll adjust to that.

The other of it is that it’s a big evaluation period for basketball. There are two major events in April that have been canceled. How significant were those events for your evaluations or is that something you can make up at different points in the year pretty easily?
Capel: All of them are important. The NCAA has changed things from the past. Last year was the first year with some of the changes that would still be in place right now. So you had a couple of events in April, you had some stuff in May that we would have been able to go to that we’re not going to be able to see right now. The evaluation part of it is big, having a chance to go to their schools and see them, to watch them work out, because you get to see them, you get to watch them. You’re not just talking to them on the phone or texting them or looking at them through a phone or a computer; you get to physically see them. You get to watch them. You get to watch how they interact with their teammates. You get to watch how they interact to coaching. You get to watch how they perform, how they respond to adversity, how they handle success. Those are the things that we’ll miss, those little things. You still get to build relationships, you still get to talk and things like that, and hopefully you’ve built some relationships ahead of time that you’re just trying to sustain and cultivate, that you’re not just trying to build right now.

But the evaluation part is big. It’s something that we’ll miss. But if we’re able to get July back, if we’re able to get some time in June, there’s still plenty of time and opportunity for us to do that, just depending on what happens.

We talked about transfers going through the recruiting process. You’ve had some transfers; would you expect as you continue to build the program that your transfer numbers will drop, or is this just what college basketball is these days, that you have to expect that kind of attrition every year?
Capel: This is college basketball. This is how it is right now. It’s a very different time and everyone needs to adjust. That’s not the coaches; that’s fans and things like that. I’m not saying that we like it; I am not saying that. But this is just the way it is. If you look every year, probably for about the past six or seven years, the number of transfers each year has continued to increase. And now they’ve implemented the transfer portal, which I think makes it easier for a young man or woman to transfer.

And then, eventually at some point, I think they’re going to get to the one-time transfer exception. I think you’re going to see those numbers astronomically go up. So this is the new normal. You just have to adjust to it.

Do you think they should have that one-year exception, in your opinion?
Capel: Yeah, probably. I mean, there’s been enough talk about it and people griping about it and things like that. Here’s the one thing that I’ll say: I’ve heard people say that, ‘Well, you know, a regular student can transfer is they want to’ or ‘A coach can leave.’ That’s been the one - ‘A coach can leave and take another job and there’s not punishment, he doesn’t have a sit a year and things like that.’ You certainly don’t have to sit a year, but there could be punishment. When I left VCU as the head coach to take the job at the University of Oklahoma, I was bound by a contract. So me taking that job, I had to break the contract at VCU, which required a buyout. And I had to pay that buyout. That money came out of my pocket. So there was a punishment. I had to do that.

Look, should they have the option and the right? Yeah, probably. But it just makes things difficult and it’s different.

You know, one of the things, I think, that’s happened - I think if you look at a lot of success stories in life, period, you figure out how to deal with tough times, adverse times, and you figure out how to conquer that. I think that’s such a great life lesson. It’s something I went through in college and a lot of people, and I think one of the things that happens sometimes is that you make it easy for these kids to leave. And they’re not learning the life lesson. If things get hard, if it doesn’t go the way they think it should go, the way they expect it to go, sometimes instead of hunkering down and buckling down and working a little bit harder and things like that, or figuring it out, it’s just, ‘Okay, let me leave, let me go. This looks a little bit better over here.’

I just think some of these life lessons that can help a young man or a young woman grow, that will help them when they’re 30-plus years old, I think you’re taking that away a little bit, too.