What Pitt is getting in Jeff Capel, and where it goes next

The names of Danny Hurley, Sean Miller and Kevin Willard may have been on the tongues of Pitt fans, but who they have to replace Kevin Stallings is Jeff Capel. The former head coach at VCU and Oklahoma, Capel will leave a comfortable position as Coach K’s right hand man at Duke, bringing with him a tremendous resume as an elite recruiter within the college game. Questions remain regarding Pitt’s future within the ACC, ones that Capel must answer both for the short-term and long-term.

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How did Capel get here? The son of the late Jeff Capel II, who presided over North Carolina A&T and Old Dominion during his own coaching career, the new Panthers’ head coach racked up over 1,500 points during his college playing days at Duke during the mid-1990s. From there, Capel worked his way up the assistant coaching ladder at ODU and VCU.

His breakthrough came in 2004 at VCU where he was given the reigns of the programs as he took it to the NCAA Tournament in the second year on the job. Winning 18 games or more each season during his four-year stay in Richmond, Oklahoma named Capel as its head coach as he the turned the program around, taking it to the NCAA Tournament in his second season in Norman.

While not implicated in the NCAA investigation into the case, Capel was relieved of his duties as the head coach at OU in 2011 when his team went 14-18 season and an assistant committed two NCAA violations.

Returning to Duke, the marriage between Capel and the Blue Devils worked for both ends. Capel was able to revitalize his career as an ace recruiter while the program was able to succeed in today’s reliance on one-and-done talent.

Capel has been the lead for landing Justice Winslow, Jahlil Okafor, Brandon Ingram, RJ Barrett and Marvin Bagley III, each highly regarded five-star prospects. While he will be forced to sell a different program and brand, his tutelage under a legendary head coach and eight years spent comprehending what he could do better the next time that he received the chance should make Capel’s chances of success at Pitt that much better.

Does Capel have what it takes to revitalize the program? One of the more respected programs in America since the turn of the century, the Panthers made the NCAA Tournament 13 years in a 15-year window during the heyday of the Jamie Dixon era. As things began to sour, Dixon found a new home at TCU and Stallings ran the program into the ground.

News broke two weeks ago that eight members of the team had asked for their release. To make matters worse, both of its 2018 recruits, Bryce Golden and Danya Kingsby, had also asked for their releases.

Landing some of the better talent on the transfer market will be vital in speeding up the revitalization, but beforehand, keeping Pitt’s personnel in tow is of the utmost importance. Parker Stewart, Marcus Carr, Terrell Brown and Shamiel Stevenson, each solid freshmen producers and building blocks, needs to be retained.

Expect for Capel to meet individually with each as he tries to get them to stay. By returning the core of its underclassmen and hitting on a few transfers this spring, the doomsdays predictions for Pittsburgh might be erased.

The city of Pittsburgh has lacked talent in recent years, which has equated to the downfall in Oakland to some degree. Just several years ago, the city boasted one of the top travel teams, one bolstered by DeJuan Blair, DJ Kennedy, DeAndre Kane, Herb Pope and Jonathan Baldwin. Since then, things have dried up and while local products Ryan Luther and Cameron Johnson enrolled recently, neither brought the cache of the prior standouts.

For Capel thankfully, there is some talent on the horizon coming in the form of Johnson’s younger brother, Donovan Johnson, along with Isaiah Warfield and Rivals75 guard Ethan Morton, each members of the 2020 class. Keeping the best talent at home is of the utmost importance, where missing on the region’s best 2018 prospect, Robby Carmody to Notre Dame, was a tough pill to swallow for the former regime.

One of the more respected recruiters, Capel will likely not back down from competing against the best for talent thanks to his ability to relate to elite prospects.

“With me personally, he related to me a lot,” Winslow told the News & Observer. “Just with where he came from, where he grew up, how he grew up, that sort of thing. Music, just his knowledge of the game, those are things that really attracted me to him.”

In the ACC, Notre Dame and Virginia Tech are two programs that have moved up the ACC’s pecking order by playing a brand of a versatile offense that sports five shot-makers on the floor at any given time. Having a concise, specific, and unique playing style is important, where the same can be said for its recruiting niche.

The Pittsburgh brand is never going to be strong enough to out-recruit UNC, Duke, Syracuse, Louisville or Ohio State. Assembling a staff with strong contacts throughout the east coast and Midwest, and further tapping into the transfer market every spring, will be vital. If they can do just that, Pittsburgh might be able to regain its footing and continually fight for NCAA Tournament berths.