Jeff Capel is the guy for the job.
It was true when Pitt selected him as their head coach to replace Kevin Stallings back in March of 2018, and now, after the Panthers landed four-star, top-75, 16-year-old 2020 forward William Jeffress Tuesday, even the program's most diehard critics will have a tough time denying that fact.
Capel promised to build the program, to bring a rush of fresh, high-level talent to Pittsburgh. So how's this?
2018: No. 32 class nationally, No. 5 ACC
• Trey McGowens
• Xavier Johnson
• Au'Diese Toney
• Curtis Aiken, Jr.
2019: No. 49 class nationally, No. 11 ACC
• Justin Champagnie
• Gerald Drumgoole
• Abdoul Karim Coulibaly
• Ryan Murphy
2020: No. 13 class nationally, No. 4 ACC
• William Jeffress
• John Hugley
• Max Amadasun
• Noah Collier
• Femi Odukale
And, keep in mind, that 2020 class doesn't include Ithiel Horton, the 6-foot-3 sophomore guard who transferred from the University of Delaware before the start of last season and was required to sit out a year as a result. Gotta love those NCAA transfer rules.
“I wanted to help my team the entire year,” Horton was telling me earlier this month. “Just being on the sidelines and seeing little things, little areas of the game where I actually could’ve made an impact? It’s really frustrating. Very frustrating ... This is what we identify ourselves with, obviously, and to have it taken away from us is like, why? Why are you punishing me for trying to make a decision to try to better my future? You’re making me feel bad about that by having me sit out a year.”
In 2020-21, though, Horton's eligible to hit the court, and he's expected to make a significant impact when he does.
"I tell our guys that if you can guard him [Horton] in practice, I haven’t seen a better guy in this league that they will have to guard,” Capel was saying of Horton back in late February.
The icing doesn't end with Horton, either. Capel and company also still have one open scholarship for 2020-21, so there's a chance they could make another addition as well. They're still in the mix for four-star, 6-foot-10 center Andrew Sanogo, making his final six, although recent reports suggest Nebraska is at the top of his list.
Point is: The No. 13-ranked class nationally — Pitt's best since 2007 — can only get better from here.
Dig deeper into the names up there, and a trend becomes obvious. It's not just that Capel snagged a pair of four-star, all-around threats in Jeffress and Hugley. It's not just that he added depth behind Johnson at point guard with Odukale. To see what happened here, you have to flip over the trading cards on these five. Check it out:
Jeffress: 6-foot-7, 195 pounds (small/power forward)
Hugley: 6-foot-9/6-foot-10 (depending who you ask), 240 pounds (power forward/center)
Amadasun: 6-foot-10, 230 pounds, 7-foot-1 wingspan (center)
Collier: 6-foot-8, 210 pounds (small/power forward)
Odukale: 6-foot-5, 180 pounds (point guard)
See it now?
They're not just versatile, talented players. They're huge — 6-foot-8 on average.
Last season, Pitt's three bigs — Terrell Brown, Eric Hamilton and Coulibaly — ran 6-foot-10, 235 pounds, 6-foot-9, 230 pounds and 6-foot-8, 220 pounds, respectively. Those were the team's fives, their centers. That recruiting class up above includes a point guard and two swing forwards and still nearly matches the size. Plus, yeah, Jeffress is only 16 and will turn 17 in June. He's going to get heavier and add muscle for sure. He may also grow taller. Wouldn't be the first time a player hit campus and kept sprouting:
Let it be known: Justin Champagnie is NOT 6-foot-6. I knew it. Haha #dkps #unleash pic.twitter.com/DcUNj9Oef3
— Hunter Alek Homistek (@HunterAHomistek) March 10, 2020
It's not that more height instantly equals more wins. It's not that easy, of course.
But Pitt's lack of size last season was a legitimate problem, apparent as early as mid-November when Pitt was dominated by West Virginia University and 6-foot-9, 250-pound Oscar Tshiebwe. He put up 20 points and 17 rebounds that night, abusing Pitt's bigs every trip down the court.
“We can’t simulate it, and certainly in a day, in two days preparation, it’s not something we can do,” Capel admitted of the challenges with planning for Tshiebwe after that game. “We don’t have those types of bodies yet."
Getting "consistent" with it will be a lot easier when Pitt can trot out three 6-foot-10 monsters in practice, with 6-foot-8 and 6-foot-7 aplenty behind them. Because preparing for the Vernon Carey Jr.'s, the John Mooney's and the Olivier Sarr's of the ACC starts well before the game, and that's a luxury Pitt didn't have last season.
It affected Pitt's performance even when they knew exactly what to expect.
Perfect example: Everyone knows about Syracuse's 2-3 zone. It's what they do. It's what they've always done under Jim Boeheim. That's their identity. Capel and Pitt saw zone a few times ahead of their first matchup against Syracuse up in New York in late January, handling it with mixed success. Facing the Orange, however, things were downright disastrous early. Syracuse jumped out to a 30-10 lead with 4:51 left in the first half, sending Pitt fans scrambling for their nearest white towel.
The zone wasn't just "working." It represented an impossible challenge for Pitt.
“I thought we were a little bit shell-shocked by the zone, just the size and length of it,” Jeff Capel was saying during his post-game press conference.
And what did you think about that zone, Mr. Champagnie?
“It’s hard for us to simulate that in practice, especially in a day and a half,” Champagnie added. "They’re a bigger team than us, height-wise. So it was kind of more spread-out [than what we could simulate in practice]. They do a good job of it. That’s, like, the main thing here. Everybody knows [their] zone.”
Pitt knew what was coming but they couldn't crack it because the lanes and the openings they saw in practice weren't there when Syracuse's lengthy starting five took the court on game day. The "main thing," as Champagnie said, was size. Pitt had to adjust on the fly, and by the time they found openings — Champagnie along the baseline and short corner and Brown near the elbow/foul line — the game was already out of reach.
Need another? Take P.J. Horne scoring 18 points on 6-for-9 shooting, including 4 for 6 from deep, to ice Virginia Tech's win over Pitt in Blacksburg, Va., back in mid-February. Horne, at only 6-foot-6, is shorter than the other names mentioned thus far, but he was playing the five for Virginia Tech at the time, and that created a mismatch. A big who can stretch the court is lethal, a lesson Pitt learned that day.
“It’s difficult because you have to go to them, [and] they’re a little bit faster than me and my boy, TB [Terrell Brown], you know?” Coulibaly said of the task after that one. “That’s why it was not too easy. It was hard.”
It'll be even harder when that five is Hugley, all 6-foot-10 of him, stepping out and drilling a three. He absolutely can and will splash it from deep:
But beyond the immediate impact on the court, the influx of all this size will make every player on Pitt's roster better and more prepared. There's no replacement for live looks against bigger, stronger defenders, and Pitt will have those options in 2020 and beyond. From Hugley to Jeffress to Odukale, it's clear Pitt prioritized size, length and versatility in its 2020 recruiting class.
Oh, and all this is happening just three years into the Capel era.
Just like he drew it up.
