Pitt athletic director Heather Lyke has made it no secret that she still believes in Jeff Capel as head basketball coach and in his efforts to revive the program.
After saying Capel "hadn't lost the team" in a press availability in February, Lyke took Tuesday to further address her confidence in Capel to lead Pitt basketball at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. While the men's NCAA Tournament is currently in the sweet sixteen round, Pitt ended its season with its worst record under Capel at 11-21, 6-14 in the ACC.
Those results haven't deterred Lyke from seeing Capel as the coach to fix Pitt basketball.
"We did not have the season we expected or wanted to have," Lyke said. "It's a chance to refocus and revaluate everything we're doing in this program from A-Z. I've spent time with coach already and we'll spend more a lot more time together, but there's no question coach Capel and his staff want to be here. His dream as a kid was to coach an ACC school and he's in his dream job. He wants to build this program and he knows that hasn't happened yet. He's working very hard to build a sense of pride in Pittsburgh. Basketball's really important in this city and it's a priority to our athletic department."
Capel has been coaching college basketball since 2000, but after being an assistant under Mike Krzyzewski at Duke for eight years, he got his shot to be a head coach for an ACC program at Pitt. Since then he's totaled a 51-69 record, with his best season being the 2019-2020 season when the Panthers finished with a 16-17 mark.
It was during that season when Capel was awarded a two-year contract extension by Lyke to push his contract through to 2027. But since then, the best Pitt has done was the 10-12 shortened season due to COVID-19 in the 2020-2021 year before finishing with a winning percentage of .344 in 2021-2022. While that has cooled off the excitement from fans about the potential for the program to make a turnaround, it hasn't changed Lyke's outlook on Capel as a coach.
"There was a lot of positivity, excitement and belief in what he was building when we did that," Lyke said of Capel's contract extension in 2019. "That hasn't waned from me. It may have from the fan base, but not internally. When you see his energy, positivity, work ethic and confidence in what he's doing, you want to retain people (like him)."
Part of what has been thought to be a major reason why Lyke didn't fire Capel has been the rumored buyout that could be priced to be anywhere between $15 million to $17 million had Pitt fired him and his coaching staff from the program. Lyke wouldn't provide any details on that buyout, but did say it didn't play a factor in the decision to stick with Capel.
"I'm not going to comment as far as individual buyouts and contract issues," Lyke said. "But if your question is if the buyout deterred us from making a change, the answer is no. You don't make personnel decisions based on buyouts. You do it based on their abilities and your confidence in them. That's why we kept Jeff."
That's a statement that could speak truth to how Lyke feels about Capel, or be the cover that a good athletic director has to use in such a situation. If the buyout were actually the only reason Pitt was keeping Capel, it wouldn't serve the university well to advertise that.
But an even more important front to avoid for Lyke other than the potential of making Capel look like a lame duck, is the concept of continuity within the Pitt athletic department and its coaches. Firing a coach four years in when Lyke sees positives in Capel as a coach would work against that.
"I don't think four years is (patience)," Lyke said. "In everyone's day and age, we want to be Iowa State to go from 2-22 to the sweet sixteen with two kids out of the Transfer Portal. Obviously, kudos to them, but it takes time to build a program the right way with the right people. We all want immediate success, but I believe in the value of continuity. Just changing for change sake is not the right decision at this time."
Lyke's notation of Iowa State is relevant in today's state of college basketball that had 1,729 players enter the Transfer Portal after last season. That's 716 more players than any other year in the existence of the Transfer Portal. But you also don't need to leave the ACC to see the difference the Transfer Portal can make for a program.
Both Wake Forest and Miami finished below Pitt in the 2020-2021 ACC standings, but jumped into the top five of the conference in 2021-2022. Wake Forest did so with four additions in the Transfer Portal and earned the No. 4 seed in the ACC Tournament. Miami, like Pitt, lost five players in the Transfer Portal but landed a superstar point guard in Charlie Moore who's carried the Hurricanes into the sweet sixteen this year.
While Lyke acknowledges that a mad scramble for instant success isn't the way to run a program year-to-year, she doesn't deny the prevalence of the Transfer Portal in college basketball and how Pitt has to be better at recruiting through it.
"There's no question there has to be a balance," Lyke said of recruiting through the Transfer Portal versus. traditional recruiting methods. "You do have to shift and prioritize a focus and the time for staff to evaluate students in the Transfer Portal. It's not something you want to bank on to find two or three diamonds in the rough, but the reality is there's a lot of talented student-athletes who go into the portal for a multitude of reasons."
Lyke acknowledged that part of Pitt's plan for better utilizing the Transfer Portal moving forward has been to assign two staff members dedicated to study players within the portal. The topic of how to handle the Transfer Portal has been a major point of discussion at coaching conferences and athletic administrations across the country as college sports shifts into an era that plays with different rules than what have been established for decades.
"It speaks to the initial question about how much time you're spending evaluating the Transfer Portal," Lyke said when asked if the success of transfer-led teams like Iowa State and Wake Forest inspire opportunity. "We have two staff members now focused on transfers. Coach Capel would tell you he feels much more prepared for the information of who's in the portal.
"You can't just open it up and look at who's there, you have to do your homework on all those people. We've prioritized that research because of the opportunity to find good kids who didn't fit wherever they were. There are very talented student athletes out there and a full vetting of that is a priority for our coaching staff right now because it can help a team quickly."
Pitt saw Xavier Johnson, Au'Diese Toney, Abdoul Karim Coulibaly, Terrell Brown and Gerald Drumgoole all enter the Transfer Portal last season. Johnson, Toney and Coulibaly were starters for the majority of the season while Brown was the only player remaining from the Kevin Stallings era and Drumgoole was a four-star recruit who never panned out.
But add Johnson and Toney's departures to Justin Champagnie heading to the NBA, Pitt's only First Team All-ACC player in the program's nine years with the ACC, and you have the Panthers' top three scorers and Capel's top three recruits during his first two years gone from the program.
Those personnel losses were tough blows to absorb and played a major role in Pitt basketball's drop this season. But Lyke sees that process as a learning experience in how to navigate the new college basketball world that has a heavier emphasis on the Transfer Portal.
"You don't want to just say it's OK to lose a student athlete to the portal," Lyke said. "Every time a student athlete leaves a program, it's an important time for a coach to reflect as to why they're leaving but more importantly, what they could have done differently as a coach. The Transfer Portal is a tool that, sometimes it does positive things, but I'm not sure it always teaches the best things. If things get tough, someone can just jump into the portal. I'm speaking in generality, but there are reasons it makes sense."
Fighting against that new culture of college sports proves difficult, as major programs everywhere are losing major recruits. Even blue blood ACC programs like Duke, who lost two four-star recruits, and North Carolina who lost a five-star recruit in Walker Kessler, have struggled to keep stars who were unhappy.
Lyke's plan for Pitt to weather those storms stems from how she sees relationships, trust and connections between the student-athletes and a program's staff rather than simply the name and reputation of a team or university.
"The only way to combat it is to place a high value on the relationship with your student-athletes," Lyke said. "If you study organizational relationship and retention, you find that brand loyalty is less valuable today than ever. It's not about playing for X school, it's about the relationships between the people. We place a stronger emphasis on that and valuing those relationships is the best counter to to the Transfer Portal."
That's where Lyke truly sees Capel as a coach who can make an impact and help Pitt adapt to these times. She's often spoke of his ability to establish a true connection with his players on and off the court, even if it hasn't yielded great results in the program's records yet.
What may be the most prominent example of that confidence was Monday's announced commitment of John Hugley IV to stay with Pitt basketball for next season. Hugley was the Panthers' leading scorer and rebounder and could've used the Transfer Portal to find a program with more recent success to further propel his chances to get noticed in his quest to make it to the NBA.
Hugley was a four-star recruit from Capel's 2020 class, but only played six games before being suspended for felony charges that would be dropped after the season. As a sophomore, Hugley became the focal point of Pitt's offense, but had his ups and downs while adapting to his first full season playing in the ACC. That development, and his commitment to stay with Pitt even after a rough season, are exhibits for Lyke's case to keep Capel.
"John is an interesting story and example of the impact coach Capel and our staff has had," Lyke said of Hugley. "He had a situation where he had to leave Pitt, but our coaches were so focused on him staying in school and doing well academically so that if things got cleaned up that he could come back."
The roller coaster season for Hugley as a developing forward was part of Pitt's year that started with losing the majority of its games by single-digits, three losses by even a single point. But those close losses changed after Pitt's three-game winning streak in the ACC turned into losing five straight games to end the season, with four of those losses each coming by 20-point deficits.
For Lyke, those later losses were clear demerits, but also didn't wash away the effort the team gave throughout the season, including the upset of North Carolina, who is playing in the sweet sixteen after an upset over the reigning national champion, Baylor, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
"There were sparks of positivity," Lyke said. "I was on the road with them at UNC and we beat a team that's sitting in the sweet sixteen right now. Ultimately this responsibility rests with coach Capel for him to diagnose. We'll work with those things together. I've shown him stats and things about my thoughts, but it's the coach's job to diagnose the problem."
Pitt fans won't care about who's job it is to diagnose the problem if there aren't changes in the results of the program. While Lyke firmly believes in giving Capel time and allowing striving for continuity on the program's coaching staff, re-establishing a connection with the program's fan base is a priority. The majority of Pitt's home basketball games in the 2021-2022 season featured a less than hall-full Petersen Events Center, and that's something Lyke wants to see change soon.
"It's absolutely a concern," Lyke said of support of the fan base. "The most important thing is building a sense of pride in what we do. That pride stems from the kids in the Oakland Zoo, the people you meet were part of it when they were students and the connectivity of this community. There's nobody more disappointed than our coaching staff, but I'm hopeful people still believe, come back and have a positive experience. When games are close, it matters. You want to be in the hunt in every single game."
But one example of how patience in a program could pay off could certainly be Lyke's patience with Pat Narduzzi and Pitt football. Prior to the 2021 season, Pitt football's six years under Narduzzi hadn't yielded a single nine-win season and only one ACC Coastal Division title in 2018. Frustration had built for a fan base that hadn't seen a single 10-win season since 1981.
Narduzzi and Pitt football answered that frustration with an 11-win season in 2021, winning the ACC Coastal Division again and earning Pitt's first-ever ACC Championship. Lyke spoke to how her relationship with Narduzzi developed during those years and how it compares to how she supports Capel with Pitt basketball.
"Every program is complex and evaluated on a lot of different factors," Lyke said. "When I got here, it was coach Narduzzi's first head coaching position. We didn't have things like full nutrition. I thought, 'how do we not have a nutritionist?' Things that weren't in place to help his program have success needed to be added. Pat and I have a very direct and open relationship and I tell him places he could be better at. Over time, I would say something and he would fix it."
"Coach Capel and I have the same relationship," Lyke continued. "I work on what I see from my seat needs to be fixed, and it's my job to help them see things they don't see. But I'm not at practice every day. With coach Narduzzi it took time, but you saw great qualities in him and the real genuine relationships between him and student-athletes. His attention to detail, his passion and his ability to get his team to play hard all the time. There were things that needed to be fixed like the penalties, but they came together."
Whether Capel can give Lyke the kind of payoff Narduzzi has is up to him. Until then, Pitt fans who remain hopeful for the future of Pitt basketball have to put their faith in Lyke's vision for how Capel can turn things around and bring an exciting basketball product back to the Pete.
• When asked about the status of negotiations for Narduzzi's contract extension as head coach at Pitt football, Lyke said that an announcement was "imminent." Narduzzi was originally signed in 2014 and extended in 2017. His current contract is set to end in 2024. An extension has been thought to be likely after Pitt football's ACC Championship in 2021. While Pitt football is in its third week of spring practices and the Blue-Gold Spring Game set for April 9 at Heinz Field, it's reasonable to expect the announcement soon to further build excitement for the program.
• Pitt basketball announced the fourth transfer from the program in forward Dan Oladapo Tuesday afternoon. Oladapo transferred to Pitt from Oakland in 2021, but only played in 15 of the team's 32 games with four starts. He averaged 10.5 minutes, 3.3 points and 1.9 rebounds in his appearances. He joins Noah Collier, Chris Payton and Onyebuchi Ezeakudo as Pitt players entering the Transfer Portal this offseason.
While this does make Pitt just one transfer short of the five players it lost to the portal last offseason, none of the players who've entered the portal played a pivotal role for Pitt basketball in 2021-2022. If all their season-long point averages per game were added together, their average would still be 7.7 points per game, which wouldn't have ranked above Pitt's fifth-best scorer on the season, Ithiel Horton at 9.8 points per game. Their losses won't have the same impact as losing Johnson and Toney to the portal along with Champagnie to the NBA.
