Pitt’s loss to Boston College on Tuesday in the ACC tournament was the final chapter of an extremely disappointing season. It felt like the Panthers made some progress this year but, then again, it is hard to really tell how much.
Jeff Capel will almost assuredly return as Pitt’s coach for next season and I think that is the right decision. Athletic director Heather Lyke values stability and is patient with her coaches when it comes to building a program. Plus, to fire Capel at this point would be to start over. There also is a very large — $15 million, according to reports — buyout that makes firing Capel impractical on a number of levels.
The thing is, Capel needs to be on an extremely hot seat next season. That will be his fifth season, and while there were a lot of things working against him when he started, it is now time to deliver. There can be no more reasons why the program is stuck in a rut. There can be no more major mistakes in recruiting and no more mass exodus of players and a reset of the process.
Capel has to get it done next season or there shouldn’t be a sixth, and that is regardless of what happens with injuries and other factors that can derail a season.
That seems harsh but he is paid extremely well to produce results and so far he has produced very few. Capel is 51-69 overall and 21-53 in ACC games. The first record is troubling because Power 5 teams can schedule a lot of home wins and pad their overall records, but Capel has lost some of those mid-major guarantee games. The second record is troubling because those are the teams that Capel has to beat to move forward in the ACC, and he has far too often not been especially good in those games.
It is actually worse when you consider that in his final two seasons at Oklahoma — also playing in a Power 5 league — he was 9-23 in conference games, meaning he is 30-76 in conference games in his past six seasons. That is an abysmal record by any measure, regardless of the circumstances.
And worse than that is how the seasons have ended every year — mostly with a thud. Pitt looked like it turned a corner when it beat North Carolina 76-67 on Feb. 16. That was the Panthers’ third win in a row and it seemed almost like a sure bet that they would eclipse their ACC win total of six from a year ago. Instead, they lost their final four regular season games and got smashed by 20 points by Boston College in their opening ACC tournament game.
In its final three regular season losses and their ACC tournament loss, Pitt fell by 21, 30, 24 and 20 and was outscored 315-220. Capel said Tuesday that they obviously didn’t play well in the past two weeks and explained that they were “mentally and physically fried” from the season.
Maybe that was the case but this is the last time that, or anything like that, should fly as a reason for why the Panthers under Capel don’t play well. Capel, who said he expects to be back, added that the Panthers are undermanned and that’s true but it is up to him to fix that.
"We need to get better players. It’s not anything personal,” he said. “We have to continue to add better players and recruit better players."
There is no question that Capel inherited a mess and that explains some of what has slowed progress but at some point that can no longer be an explanation. Capel has made some mistakes in recruiting and has had too many defections and too many players who didn’t fit with the culture he is building. It obviously has been a grind but he believes the Panthers are on the right path.
“Hell yeah, from when I found it [the program has made progress],” Capel said. “It was completely depleted when I got here. It was a mess. I didn’t know how bad it was. I don’t think the people inside the program knew how bad it was. Where we are today, from the first day I took over, is significantly better. Is it improved the way I thought it would be after four years? Absolutely not. No one is more frustrated than me with that. I take responsibility for it."
The fact that he is willing to take responsibility for the shape the program is in is a good first step. The next step is for him to do something about it — and that must start with all of the main players returning. There is, at least, a core group that is a solid foundation of players to build on and that leads to the next step — adding to the group to build Pitt into a winning program again.
That last step, though, is winning games. How many does Capel need to win to move on to a sixth year? I don’t know that there is an exact number but there has to be a clear improvement in that area.
Next year can’t be about progress in areas off the court and around the program, it has to be about progress on the court. Pitt simply cannot finish again by losing its final four games and getting pounded in the ACC tournament by a bottom-feeder.
