Duke treats Mike Krzyzewski to 86-56 victory against Pitt in his last game at the Pete

Reality and emotion – large doses of both – surrounded Jeff Capel on Tuesday night almost from the moment he walked inside Petersen Events Center.

Pitt’s 86-56 loss to No. 4 Duke was not unexpected. Even the 30-point margin of defeat – Pitt’s most decisive since a 94-60 loss to Louisville on Feb. 11, 2018 — can’t be considered an incredible shock.

While a frustrating season unravels in its final days, the Panthers (11-19, 6-13 ACC) have lost three in a row and seven of their past 10.

Pitt’s defense was weak, allowing the Blue Devils (26-4, 16-3) to shoot 70.4% in the second half (19 of 27) while scoring a season-high 50 points after halftime. Freshmen Trevor Keels (27), Paolo Banchero (21) and A.J. Griffin (12) scored almost 70% of Duke’s points while junior Wendell Moore added 13.

Duke nailed down its first ACC regular-season championship since 2010.

But the game was special for another important reason: Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, who is retiring at the end of the season, was coaching on another man’s turf for the last time. Capel, who played for and coached with Krzyzewski for 11 seasons, felt distinct pangs of emotion in the final moments before tipoff.

“It was very strange,” he said of coaching against his mentor. “As I got here and when we went in and did the pregame talk with our guys, I went back to the little room where I sit.

“I texted my wife and said, `For some reason I got really emotional.’ And I didn’t really understand it.”

Then, he walked onto the court where he was a centerpiece in a pregame ceremony honoring Krzyzewski for his 47 years in coaching. That’s when it hit Capel, and he knew why.

“One of the reasons I chose Duke (coming out of high school in 1993) is because he reminded me of my dad,” said Capel, who was a freshman point guard on a team that reached the 1994 national championship game.

“If anyone knew my dad (a coach himself), you always knew where you stood. That’s the way (Krzyzewski) was. He didn’t promise anything, except for a fair opportunity. `I’m going to coach you hard and I’m going to teach things.’ ”

While a crowd of 12,095 – the largest at the Pete this season — stood in tribute, Capel handed Krzyzewski a steel statue of a fist. The fingers on the fist represent everything Duke’s program stands for – and it has for a long time, Krzyzewski said. “Communication, trust, collective responsibility, care and pride,” he said, listing each, proudly.

“I believe in every word of it,” Capel said. “I use it in my home. It means a lot to me. They are words that have helped make that program — I think it’s the premier program in all of college basketball.

“More importantly, I think it has helped all of us who have worn that jersey, helped us become better men.

“The message goes beyond basketball. It’s something we talked about as players, upholding those words, upholding the tenets of the program.”

Capel said he tries to apply Duke’s standards to the Pitt program, but he does not coach the Panthers like the demanding Krzyzewski coached him in the 1990s.

“You can’t. I wouldn’t have a job,” he said. “We’re in a very, very different time. You have to be really careful.”

Meanwhile, Capel has a tough job now, coaching a team that will finish with Pitt’s sixth consecutive losing record. He had a week to prepare for this game, but players got swept up in the emotions of the night and couldn’t recover.

“We were really, really excited,” Capel said. “Sometimes, you can be too excited, too juiced up. We never were able to get a grasp on the game, defensively. Big credit to them. They made, like, every shot.”

Pitt was not as efficient. Beyond John Hugley (19 points) and Jamarius Burton (13), Pitt had almost no offense against Duke’s superior athletes.

“We just didn’t execute what we wanted to execute,” Capel said. “We had something that we wanted to run at the beginning of the game. We worked on it for a couple days. We got out there, and the first time we get the basketball, we never really got into it.

“Defensively, we’re supposed to switch at times. We switched, but left the guy wide open. It’s like we didn’t communicate the switch. It was plays like that and they made us pay for it every time.”