How lunch with Jim Boeheim helped Pitt's Jeff Capel understand Syracuse's zone

Jeff Capel didn’t get where he is today by wasting a rare opportunity.

Perhaps that valuable character trait will help Pitt’s coach and his players Wednesday night when he matches wits with Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim at Petersen Events Center.

Capel has had a long relationship with Boeheim, who’s won 961 games in 44 years at Syracuse, second in Division I men’s basketball only to Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski.

Capel said he first talked basketball with Boeheim 15 years ago when Pitt’s coach was an assistant to Villanova’s Jay Wright on the U.S. gold-medal winning team at the 2005 World University Games in Turkey. At the time, Boeheim was the chair of the youth division of USA Basketball and Capel was the head coach at VCU.

Both men were in Colorado Springs, Colo., for training when a thought struck Capel. Why not ask Boeheim to lunch and pick his brain about the zone defense?

“I didn’t know how to teach zone,” Capel said. “I never really played it in college (at Duke).

“I learned how to teach the zone by watching coach Boeheim’s instructional video. I figured. I have him. Let me ask him.”

No college basketball coach knows zone defense better than Boeheim, whose 2-3 configuration has been confusing teams for 4 ½ decades.

The coaches, separated in age by 30 years, have talked basketball with each other many times, including while Capel was an assistant on Krzyzewski’s staff at the World Cup in Spain in 2014 and at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

“I’ve had great interactions with Jeff many, many times during the Olympic experience,” Boeheim said. “They were always really good times.”

Now, the two are ACC rivals, with Boeheim, 75, winning all four games against Capel’s Pitt teams.

But the closest of the four was Pitt’s 69-61 loss to Syracuse last month at the Carrier Dome. Pitt recovered from a 32-21 halftime deficit to score 40 points against the zone in the second half.

“I thought it took us a while to get used to it,” Capel said. “There’s nothing we can do in practice to simulate it. We don’t have the size. We don’t have the instincts of it.

“We looked really good against our zone (in practice) and we got there and we were able to see right away that it was very different. Those gaps that were open, the shots you were able to get in practice … those closed up pretty quickly.”

Despite his talks with Boeheim over the years, Capel said, “We don’t know it like they know it. It’s theirs. No one else plays it like them.”

But Pitt went to school in the first half and was able to penetrate the zone in the second half.

“We got better movement,” Capel said. “We didn’t just go east to west. We were able to go downhill and I thought we utilized more of the court.

“And we were able to make some shots. Sometimes, it’s that simple.”

After missing 20 of 26 shots in the first half, Pitt was 15 of 28 after intermission.

That was the end of a nine-game stretch in which Pitt guard Ryan Murphy hit at least one 3-pointer in eight of nine games (22 of 51). Since then, he is 0 for 7 after suffering a concussion against Duke and missing three games.

His long-range ability, however, could be crucial against Syracuse’s zone.

NOTE: Capel said Kene Chukwuka, who has missed the entire season after hip surgery, will be part of Senior Day ceremonies honoring players not expected to return next season. Also honored will be seniors Eric Hamilton and Anthony Starzynski and junior Samson George.

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