Offseason critical for Panthers’ Capel
Coach must rebuild Pitt’s depleted roster
As Jeff Capel gathered his players around him in the locker room in Greensboro Coliseum Tuesday after Pitt’s 79-73 loss to Miami in the first round of the ACC tournament, he didn’t talk about the future, about everything that looms for the Panthers.
There was too much in the present that he didn’t want to relegate to the past, too much to savor in that moment before letting go and turning to what was next.
“As we let the emotions of the loss and our season end and die down, we’ll begin to talk about that,” Capel said.
If it wasn’t already, that future is now before him. With games finished for the next eight months, the most important offseason of Capel’s tenure awaits.
What could have set up to be a breakthrough 2021-22 season for the Panthers will now, potentially, be a rebuilding one. Two of their top three scorers, both of them three-year starters, transferred in late February. Justin Champagnie, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder and a first-team allACC honoree, is beginning the process of determining whether he wants to forgo his final two years of eligibility and enter the NBA draft. For now, at least five scholarships are open.
The extent of Capel’s roster reconstruction will hinge on what Champagnie ultimately chooses.
If the 6-foot-6 forward goes pro, Pitt will be without its top three scorers from this past season, a trio that accounted for 65.4% of its scoring, 53.3% of its rebounds, 65.8% of its assists and 49.5% of its field goal attempts, a figure that would have been higher had Xavier Johnson and Au’Diese Toney played in the team’s final four games. Without Champagnie, the Panthers’ leading returning scorer would be guard Ithiel Horton at 8.9 points per game. If the Brooklyn native stays, there’s a central figure around which to build, although there would still be concerns with that arrangement, as Champagnie’s efficiency decreased late in the season as opposing defenses keyed on him more after Johnson’s and Toney’s departures.
Consequential as his decision is, there will be holes to fill regardless — and a lot of them.
With Toney, Johnson and Gerald Drumgoole in the transfer portal, Terrell Brown gone after participating in senior night and Nike Sibande not counting against the scholarship limit due to NCAA rules surrounding returning seniors, Capel has five open scholarships with which to work, which accounts for 38.5% of his scholarship allotment. That number could still increase, whether it’s an early exit for Champagnie or freshman big man John Hugley’s indefinite suspension becoming a permanent dismissal.
Those vacancies on the roster are an issue. The lack of concrete, non-theoretical options to fill them are another matter entirely.
Pitt is the lone ACC team and is one of only three of the 75 majorconference teams without a commitment for the 2021 recruiting class (Penn State and Oklahoma State are the others). Among high school seniors, the options are seemingly sparse. Only 10 players in Rivals.com’s top 100 haven’t committed or signed anywhere, five of whom are in the top 12 and are not considering the Panthers. In his first three seasons, though, Capel has gotten commitments from players who have reclassified, from Toney and Trey McGowens to, most recently, William Jeffress. He has been creative and flexible in filling out his roster before and been quite good at it, with two top-35 classes in his first three years, including Rivals’ No. 18 class last year. There’s still work that can and will be done.
Capel has repeatedly noted that he and his staff will look “everywhere” for players. The most feasible options appear to be transfers and with more than 400 players already in the NCAA transfer portal before Selection Sunday, there will be no shortage of possibilities.
Competition for those players, however, figures to be intense, potentially pitting Pitt against more historically successful and more presently stable programs. It’s one thing to fill openings on a roster. It’s quite another for them to be impact players in the ACC who can help the team climb up the conference standings.
“This is a big offseason for us,” Capel said Tuesday after the Miami loss.
With at least seven scholarship players set to return, there are also ways of improving the Panthers internally, particularly since four of those players are freshmen who should continue to get better.
Femi Odukale’s strong and capable play in Pitt’s final four games, highlighted by a 28-point outburst in the ACC tournament, showed that the program could very well be in good hands with him running the point. Horton shot 39% from 3-point range in Pitt’s final 17 games after shaking off some of the rust that plagued him earlier in the season. Sibande proved to be a difference-maker once he started consistently getting major minutes, averaging 15
points per game while shooting 47.3% from the field and 48% from 3 in the Panthers’ final five games. Jeffress, at just 17 years old, should only continue to get better, progress he showed later in the season, albeit inconsistently.
“I’m excited about our future,” Capel said. “I think we have some really good pieces. I’m very hopeful that we have a spring and summer where we can work with the guys and help them get better. That’s one of the things that I think hurt us and any team that’s relying on young guys. You didn’t have the spring and the summer to really, really work, and we have some guys that really need to change their bodies, get stronger, get in great shape and all those things. I look forward to having the opportunity to do that with these guys.”
The roster fluctuation of the past several weeks sets Capel up for a stretch of several months that could very well determine the fate of his Pitt tenure.
When he took over the program in 2018, there was an urgency to his work. He was, after all, tasked with leading a program that had
just gone winless in ACC play the previous season and had only a handful of official visits left at its disposal. He handled that challenge deftly, bringing in two top150 recruits and landing the No. 32 class nationally, having filled up four of the five roster openings that existed shortly after his arrival.
At that time he was able to sell hope to recruits, about being able to forge ahead at a program that had nowhere to go but forward. As bad as the situation with the Panthers seemed — and it was — it didn’t happen under Capel. He was new. He was different.
Now, the hole from which Pitt will have to climb was created on his watch, making the pitch to prospective players different, even if it’s similar in spirit. Momentum is precious in recruiting, helping dictate where a program can go and the caliber of prospect it can lure. The Panthers, at the moment, don’t have much of it.
Whether they can regain it over the next few months will be one of the most critical questions they’ve faced in years.