Pitt coach Jeff Capel seeks closure from the past, looks hopefully toward new season

Not many Pitt fans realize — or even care — that Jeff Capel won seven of his first eight games as the school’s basketball coach.

That’s right. You can look it up.

In November of 2018, Youngstown State, VMI, Troy, Central Arkansas, North Alabama, Saint Louis and Duquesne lost by an average margin of nearly 17 points.

The only blemish was a one-point loss at Iowa, an eventual 2019 NCAA Tournament team that was ranked No. 14 at time.

Sadly for Capel’s sake, it’s the next 112 games — of which Pitt won only 44 — that have defined his tenure. Capel will open his fifth Pitt season Monday night when the Panthers meet Tennessee Martin at Petersen Events Center.

While Capel has tried to recover from the “dumpster fire” (his words) he inherited from Kevin Stallings, Pitt remains in the midst of a dark period of basketball that has been marked by three players facing criminal charges in a 21-month period and numerous others leaving for other schools. Pitt’s record in the past four ACC seasons is 21-53.

Two of the charged players, John Hugley and Ithiel Horton, found their way back onto the team. Hugley has become Pitt’s best player and a team leader. Horton transferred to UCF.

Dior Johnson, the most highly touted freshman to enroll under Capel’s watch, is facing formal arraignment Dec. 7 on two counts of strangulation and simple assault.

The hope is Capel can put all that negativity behind him, find closure from the past and move forward with a new and — by all accounts — hungrier group of players.

There are 11 scholarship players on the team, including six who are new. Hugley and William Jeffress, two of the five holdovers, won’t be available Monday because of injuries.

After two exhibition games against Division II teams Clarion and Edinboro, Capel said he has been pleased with his players’ work ethic and willingness to share the basketball.

Yet, he offered this disclaimer: “A lot of work to do,” he said after the 92-53 victory Wednesday against Edinboro.

Without Hugley and Jeffress, depth will be compromised early in the season. But Capel is hoping to develop a long bench that will allow him to ratchet up the offensive tempo.

“It’s been something we’ve been trying to work on in practice all the time,” he said. “We feel like we have quality depth. We have some guys who can get out and run, so we do want to play at a good tempo.

“In order to do that, though, we have to be good defensively.”

Admittedly with inferior athleticism, Clarion and Edinboro turned the ball over a total of 45 times against Pitt.

“We started blitzing the ball screens (against Edinboro), and that increased the tempo,” Capel said. “We are going to have to do some things defensively a little bit different to create that type of tempo. There are a lot of things that we worked on that we haven’t shown. We’ll be ready when we get to Monday.”

He described his team’s defensive effort in the first half against Edinboro as “scattered.”

“That led to them getting some good baskets. In the second half, we did a much better job of containing the basketball. Our rotations were better.”

Capel hopes to have a different look on offense, with better shooters outside the 3-point arc who may force opposing defenses to give Hugley room to breathe in the paint. Often last season, he was faced with double- and triple-teams even before he caught the basketball.

Perhaps transfers Nelly Cummings, Greg Elliott and Blake Hinson and guard Jamarius Burton, who transferred from Texas Tech last year, will make the defense pay if it packs the paint too tightly.

The Panthers aren’t afraid to shoot from beyond the 3-point arc, hitting 23 of 62 (37%) in the exhibitions.

Pitt has a difficult early-season schedule, meeting West Virginia in the basketball version of the Backyard Brawl next Friday at the Pete. Power conference opponents include No. 22 Michigan, Northwestern and Vanderbilt.

“It gets real now,” Capel said.

It will be real difficult if Hugley’s injury forces him to miss a significant amount of time. In the midst of the nonconference games, Pitt’s first ACC game (Dec. 2 at N.C. State) is less than a month away.

Replacements for Hugley will come from 6-foot-11 sophomore center Federiko Federiko, a transfer from Northern Oklahoma, and 7-foot freshman Guillermo Diaz Graham, a native of the Canary Islands.

Born in Cairo, Egypt, and raised in Helsinki, Finland, Federiko originally committed to West Virginia. He had a total of 20 points and 20 rebounds in the exhibition games.

“The thing we’re trying to do is get them ready for the physicality of college basketball. That’s something that’s a little bit different,” Capel said.

“(Federiko) is the guy who can play above the rim. We’re not going to throw it to him down there necessarily to make a post move. We want him in dunker’s spots. We want him ball-screening and rim-running hard and putting pressure on the rim. Now, we have a guy we can throw it up to and can play above the rim. He’s done a pretty good job of that. He’s got to continue to do more.”

Capel described Diaz Graham as a “skilled” player who can “pick and pop.”

“He can pass it. He can put it on the floor from out there.”

Diaz Graham’s twin brother, 6-foot-11 Jorge, also may become an outside scoring and passing threat.

Without Hugley, who averaged 13 points per game over the past two seasons, Pitt loses a proven scorer.

“We don’t have one guy right now that I think is just a dynamic guy that can create off the bounce and just get places and score at will, or a guy in the post,” Capel said. “We have that, we feel like, when we have John. But without him, we really have to do it even more together.

“My hope is it makes us even better when John is able to come back. As we get the big fellow back, then everything comes a little bit better.”