Pitt coach sees lot to admire in Virginia Tech
Jeff Capel didn’t even need to watch the game unfolding mere feet in front of him Saturday to know his Pitt team had a worthy foe in No. 22 Virginia Tech. He could hear it.
There’s constant talking, communication between players that holds them accountable and makes sure they’re in the right place at the right time to make the right play. There’s the perpetual squeaking of shoes on the floor, the sound of hustle and plays big and small being made.
It resonated with him. “There’s a standard there,” Capel said. “There’s a standard within their program. I was hoping it wouldn’t happen, but you’re not surprised when guys step and make plays.”
The Panthers’ 70-64 loss to the Hokies, their ninth in a row, was another reminder of how much further a rebuilding program has to climb before it can begin to reach the level of programs like Virginia Tech, which has become an NCAA tournament mainstay and has been a presence in the top 25 of the national
polls the past few seasons under coach Buzz Williams.
The Hokies aren’t necessarily an aspirational example for Pitt – Capel has his own program-building plans and doesn’t need to mimic those of another coach – but they possess some of the traits and qualities Capel hopes to establish in Oakland.
Those characteristics were on display regularly Saturday. Virginia Tech, for one, was able to go on the road against a young, plucky team in front of an energized home crowd and get a win without injured point guard Justin Robinson, the team’s senior leader and secondleading scorer.
There were several moments when the Panthers threatened to tie the game or take the lead in the second half, but in each of those instances, the Hokies quelled it and pushed their lead to a much more comfortable margin, often doing so swiftly.
To Capel, that kind of resilience is built over time, the product of a culture that is created over classes of players and several years.
At a different, more prosperous time in Pitt’s history, it had such a model, when younger players would come in, inhabit smaller roles and learn the intricacies of the program and college basketball as a whole before they settled into the kind of players on which the team would rely. The older players upheld those standards and culture because they had worked hard to establish it and seen the success it brought.
The Panthers don’t have such a luxury now, with three freshmen among its four leaders in points and minutes per game. Promising prospects that would, under different circumstances, be eased into ACC basketball have been thrust into the fire. There’s little other choice.
The hope is that these formative experiences and lumps can lead to a more productive future, that Xavier Johnson, Trey McGowens and Au’Diese Toney could one day be veteran pillars of a conference contender and NCAA tournament team.
“You want to win and you also feel like that you can win,” Capel said. “But we have to do the things necessary to win and we have to do the things necessary every possession to be worthy of winning. We have to understand that. We have to learn that. The thing that we don’t have in our program right now is we don’t have anyone that’s won. We don’t have anyone in that locker room that has won. The only guy we have did it at another place [graduate transfer Sidy N’Dir].”
Additions like the three freshmen and N’Dir have made Pitt a different team than it was the previous season, when it infamously finished 0-19 in conference play, hastening coach Kevin Stallings’ firing and Capel’s subsequent arrival. It’s an improved group, one with two ACC wins and a median average margin of defeat of 10 points (compared to 15 last season).
Virginia Tech coach Buzz Williams, due to a long sequence of schedule conflicts, in which his team and Pitt would be playing at or around the same time, didn’t get the chance to watch the Panthers in earnest until last Thursday. What he saw, both on tape and in person, was a different team.
“The style of play on both ends of the floor are diametrically opposed to what they were,” Williams said.
Virginia Tech for many years was a non-factor, a program with one NCAA tournament in 20 seasons playing in a small, isolated town and in the immense shadow of its football program before Williams led it to at least 20 wins in each of the past four seasons.
Capel, however, doesn’t need reaffirming words from Williams or the Hokies’ recent success to uplift his spirits about what Pitt can ultimately become, much like how a nine-game losing streak can’t shake them.
“I don’t need that to have hope,” Capel said. “I have hope. I believe in what we’re doing. I believe in the process in which we’re doing it. It’s frustrating right now obviously that you’re losing, but I’ve tried to have a really good perspective on where we are as a program when I took over. I haven’t deviated from that, even when we had success.
“I understand how hard this is going to be. It’s not a quick fix. We won a couple of games early and maybe it changed some expectations for all of us, but again, I think I’ve had a pretty good perspective on this. It’s hard. It’s really hard. It’s frustrating. We want to be better, but I think we’re getting better. I really and truly do. It’s just not equating to wins.”