THE IR ING COACH Capel brings optimism to Panthers

honored, excited, and ready to go, ready to get started, to build this back into a championship program,” Capel said. “I have absolutely no doubt that’s something we will do.”

With that certainty comes something the program has sorely and obviously lacked the past two years — optimism.

Two years ago to the day, in the same venue where Capel and athletic director Heather Lyke spoke Wednesday, Kevin Stallings was brought in as Pitt’s coach. An event that began with the school’s band and cheerleaders flanking Stallings on his way to the podium turned into an aggressively uncomfortable inquisition, one in which then-athletic director Scott Barnes and Stallings were left to address questions and concerns about a universally unpopular hire.

Things didn’t improve from there. Stallings’ first Pitt team underachieved, finishing with a losing record for the first time since 2000, and his second one cratered, leaving behind swaths of empty seats in a once-thundering venue, alienating an already fractured fan base and turning a program that was a No. 1 seed into the NCAA tournament just seven years ago into an afterthought in a professional market, at best, and a laughingstock, at worst, the subject of derision, ridicule and GIFs of sitcom characters fumbling massive pots of chili.

For a fan base understandably prone to fatalism, the anxiety didn’t end March 8 with Stallings’ firing. As recently as Monday — days after it missed out on its top target, Dan Hurley — questions continued to linger about where Lyke’s search would turn and whether the program could find the right person to help it regain even a sliver of what it once had.

In Capel, they got just what they needed, someone who could reinvigorate a dejected fan base and start to fill a near-empty Petersen Events Center in the short term while offering a recruiting and talent development prowess that can once again make the Panthers competitive in the ACC in the long term. It’s a sense of reassurance that extends to administrators such as Lyke, who said Capel is taking over what she believes to be a top-10 or top-20 job in Division I.

“I don’t think it’s anywhere near where it can be,” Lyke said. “I think we only have the ability to go up, and I don’t know if we’ve really adapted well yet to the ACC at the time. So for us, it’s unbelievable facilities, you’re in the heart of campus, there’s great tradition, it’s a world-class academic institution, and we’re going to be partners in this. My job is to provide them with the tools and resources necessary to be successful, and we’re going to do that.”

Much of what Lyke sees Capel does, as well. When he would come to Oakland as an opposing coach in recent years, he saw the facilities Pitt had to offer. He saw a school committed to basketball located in the middle of a dynamic city. In Lyke and Gallagher, he saw leaders with whom he could work and with a plan he could embrace. After years of ultimately rejecting suitors such as Georgia Tech and Arizona State, he had found a long-awaited fit.

Now, Capel has to encounter the challenges that loom and begin the process of turning Pitt into what he believes it can be.

He has spoken with the Panthers players and plans to have individual meetings with them in the coming days in which he can get to know them and they can get to know him. Despite nine players asking for their release over the past two weeks, he said every player will have the opportunity to return. He has an idea of who he wants on his coaching staff, one of whom is former Pitt standout and assistant coach Brandin Knight. He’ll have to replenish the Panthers roster with an influx of new talent, a chore left in the capable hands of a man widely regarded as one of the best recruiters in the sport. In his search for players, no particular region will be targeted. As Capel said “I believe I can recruit a kid from anywhere.”

Beliefwill help carry Capel as much as his coaching aptitude in the next several years, as he chases a destination he thinks can be reached. That belief isn’t limited to just Capel and his bosses. For the first time in years, it’s something to which anyone remotely associated with the program can clingmore than just blindly.

“There’s a brand here,” Capel said. “Being a part of the ACC, there’s a tradition here. There are facilities here, resources here. You have a great city. You have a great academic institution. I don’t see why we can’t. We’re going to go after it.”