Consider the Kevin Stallings tenure at Pittsburgh as 2 lost seasons of Panther basketball. This was universally hailed as at worst a crippling hire that could set the Pitt program back years. At best maybe Stallings could recapture the magic when led Vanderbilt to the NCAA tournament 5 times from 2007-2012. As we know now, Stallings’s 2 years were the worst case scenario. A 4-32 ACC record did Stallings in and Pittsburgh had to move on.
With declining attendance, transfer requests left and right any new hire was going to have a major rebuild on their hands. That appeared to eliminate any big names, but Pitt early on let everyone know they were serious about getting the Pitt program back on track.
Pitt has offered Dan Hurley a multi-year deal in excess of $3 million dollars annually to be its next head basketball coach, per multiple sources. UConn and URI still in play.
— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) March 20, 2018
Pittsburgh didn’t get Hurley, but they were willing to pay for name coach and they landed one in Jeff Capel. It isn’t like Pittsburgh hired Chris Mack as Louisville did, but given the state of Pittsburgh basketball this is a really good hire. Capel has won big in the past. In 6 of first 7 seasons coaching he won at least 18 games. He led VCU to the NCAA tournament, and had a 30 win Elite 8 season at Oklahoma. It didn’t end well at Oklahoma though, and in 2011 Capel joined the coaching staff at Duke.
He’s been there ever since, and many thought he was being groomed to take over for Mike Krzyzewski when he retired. That’s high praise. Capel knows exactly what it takes to coach at win at the highest level. He knows the ACC inside and out, and that’s a huge benefit to Pittsburgh.
Capel’s name brings instant credibility to Pittsburgh after the laughingstock it’s basketball program had become.
I’m not quite calling this a home run hire just yet, but it is close. I’m don’t think Pitt could have pulled in a bigger name, and in time he’ll make Pitt fans forget about Kevin Stallings.
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