Wildwood13 wrote:

Get real Duq 81, J D Barnett took them to the NCAA six out of the seven years he coached at VCU before Capel. Four of those trips he went to the second round ! Capel once out of four years and only the first round ! To say that Capel is the one who built VCU is absurd.

Barnett left VCU 17 years before Capel got there. They made the NCAAs once during those 17 years. Capel got the ball rolling again.
 

Thanks for contributing Wild and while we're at it, there was a similar post of congrats to Heather for the hire, on this board, yet!  Let's get some reality together re Pitt.  1. Pitt went to Durham for Schreyer and was left with the bride's groom (Capel).  2. Heather was originally hired by Pitt as Prez Gallagher's beard.  Although, she was likely a good choice for Pitt after the Pederson-Graham-Barnes-Stallings debacles.  Following his HC stint at Okey, the fired Capel was likely heading in direction of career assistant with no chance of replacing coach K.  As for calling this a great hire, wonder if Gallagher talked to the folks in Oklahoma prior to making this head-scratcher  move.  And, did Capel in fact throw his asst coach under the bus for cheating scandal he oversaw?  Time may heal wounds but this head coach couldn't carry Mark Schmidt's j-strap.


 

I find it rather funny how a number of coaches associated with the search were called "bums" by pitt fans and their boosters in the local media based on their number of tournament appearances in relation to years coached, yet Capel has a 3/9 ratio across his time at VCU & Oklahoma. 

They'll win the press conference on this one as it is going to be hailed as the building of Duke 2.0 or Duke-lite with his noted recruiting ability and with a group of fans at pitt that seem to care as much or more about looking good than having effective and winning teams maybe that's half the battle.. Outside of the Griffin years at OU there's no distinct profile offensively as to what his teams did well and defensively is only a little more clearer and they never played that "FUN" style of uptempo. How will it play out on the court at pitt? 

They'll certainly be in on some big time players and land some that'll get the fans and media crowning themselves before any results actually happen while pretending like the last few years never happened.

Last edited by Brian (3/28/2018 9:22 am)

ghost wrote:

townsonkid wrote:

Can Capel get top tier ACC talent to pitt?  Thats the question.  Dixon won in the big east with 1980s style big east teams.  Pitt has yet to really do much in the ACC, couple of upsets here and there, but nothing great.  Can Capel, with all his recruiting ability, walk into a top 50 players living room, with a pitt shirt on, and sign a player?  It was easy with Duke, and help from Coach K, but pitt aint Duke.  

Very good hire by Pitt. Capel , by all accounts , is a recruiting beast.  His "gets" at Oklahoma and VCU seem to support this notion.

Their fans and big money donors seem pleased and are content to give him a bit of a honeymoon period.

What will be interesting is how he constructs the 2018-19 team. Does he take the K. Dambrot approach and go for the one time fix ( looking at a fix beginning in year #2 ) , or does he patch it together and try for a turnaround in year 1 ( keep some of the key players , pull in a recruit or 2 , and fill out the 13 man roster from the large pool of "Grad transfers" )

The thing I come back to is this - he doesn't have to get top level ACC talent.  All he has to do is get slightly above average ACC talent. He racks up a big non-conference record , finishes in the top 1/2 of the ACC ( or even a bit lower perhaps ) and Pitt is off to the NCAA tourney.
 

The idiots in the fanbase that were glad to see Dixon leave are talking about 5 star players, and one and dones, LOL! He's going to bring in 4 star guys who will stay a while, and attempt to get back into the top half of the league. The top half nearly always makes the dance, and you hope to make an occasional run. The realistic fans know this is Pitt's ceiling, and will be happy with it, the idiots will cry and complain, and demand a new coach.

Geez, the Pitt lovefest here is as stinking nauseating as the one on social media.

Ugh. Enough.

Eat  Pitt!

Two years of losing?
What if the Dukes beat Pitt in Dec 2018?
The media wolves will be running then.