It's clear that Jeff Capel had, and still has, a steep hill to climb to get Pitt back to being regularly competitive in the ACC.
The cupboards were bare when he took over the head coaching position from Kevin Stallings, and now Capel has to find ways to restock shelves he had started to fill after Xavier Johnson and Au'Diese Toney entered the transfer portal this week.
But there's no time for Capel to fret about that or worry about what the impact might be. Right now, he has to work even harder with the players who are still in his program.
The coach wouldn't delve into why Johnson and Toney -- two starters and Capel recruits -- entered the portal on back-to-back days. He has said the departures were mutually agreed upon.
"There are a lot of factors that go into these decisions," Capel said during his Thursday radio show on 93.7 the Fan. "And again we wish them well. And for us, we're trying to focus on the guys that we have to finish our season as strongly as we possibly can. Obviously, you know, hurts our depth, more so with Xavier, and I say that not not diminishing Au'Diese but that was probably a good chance that he wasn't going to play for the rest of the season anyway because of the concussion. We knew that he was going to be out on Sunday. I wasn't sure about Tuesday, and then we weren't sure about the last game."
Toney missed his second game of the season in Sunday's loss to Florida State due to a head injury. In his place, Nike Sibande stepped up with his best game of the season scoring 12 points with seven rebounds and two assists. But still, Toney and Johnson were two of the Panthers' top three scorers. Justin Champagnie leads the team with an 18.8 points per game average.
There's no doubt the departures significantly limit the Panthers in the remaining games. They have three left on the schedule and four others that were postponed that still could be played.
"Those two guys were two of our most experienced guys," Capel said. "So that's in the short term. Long term, I don't see any effects to be honest with you. Again, that's not doing anything or saying anything to diminish them. But we have to continue to develop the young men that are in our program. And that's what we plan to do. I look at it as that it gives us two more scholarships to go out and get guys who really want to be here. Be a part of what we're doing, along with the guys that we have."
I'm sorry, but it's difficult to buy into the idea that their departures won't have any long-term impact on the program. Not because Capel can't rebuild and find answers for Pitt's losses, but because this is a clear turning point either way for Pitt.
On one hand, younger players on the roster like Femi Odukale, William Jeffress and Noah Collier could see Johnson and Toney leaving as a sign that Capel isn't afraid of moving on from any player. That could be a sign that their coach is unwavering in that if a player doesn't buy into what he's teaching, he will not bend even if they're experienced players and his first recruits.
On the other hand, Pitt might not find answers for losing two of its top three scorers and the Panthers could still be struggling this time next year with no sign of improvement on the way. One of the biggest challenges for Pitt's leadership this season was that Johnson, Toney and Champagnie were the only players with serious playing time from last season still on the roster.
A major point of hope for next season was that Capel's roster would finally have a strong mix of experienced upperclassmen in those three players along with other younger players like Odukale, Jeffress and Collier who could all welcome a new recruiting class and set a new tone for Pitt basketball. But now the Panthers will have to continue on that path without two of those upperclassmen.
Again, there's long-term impact from their departures this week. The Panthers could turn them into points of inspiration and find a way to rise above them, but that's still an impact. Especially since Capel noted that there might have been reason to expect their departures from those inside the program.
"I'm not sure they were surprised," Capel said when asked if his remaining players were surprised by Johnson and Toney transferring. "So they didn't slow down and we've had good meetings, good practices, good workouts, and everyone's looking forward to Sunday."
What I do buy into is Capel will stick to his principles on what he sees is necessary to properly build a program.
"Things like this happen," Capel said on Friday during his press availability. "Nothing surprises me anymore in college athletics especially college basketball. You do spend time recruiting and developing relationships, and then you do spend time coaching, mentoring, trying to help them develop both on and off the court, and sometimes in situations like this happen. It can be a gut punch. But, you know, you got to move on. That's, that's the bottom line, you have to move on to the next thing and. And that's what we're doing."
Capel's dealt with gut punches before. When he became Oklahoma's head coach in 2006, three players de-committed from the program before he could even begin, breaking up what was considered as potentially a top five recruiting class in the NCAA. One of those de-commits ended up being Scottie Reynolds who hit Villanova's game winner over Pitt in the 2009 Elite Eight.
Capel faced a lot of adversity then and was eventually fired in 2011 after several problems emerged with the program, including two NCAA violations that were never linked to Capel. But a decade later, Capel says that experience has helped him overcome his worst fear as a coach.
"I've been through a lot in coaching," Capel said. "My last year and a half at Oklahoma, that was brutal. I spent the last year there knowing I was going to get fired at the end of the year. And so, for me, individually, I've lived through maybe the thing that I feared the most back when I first started, which was being fired. I've had bad articles written about me. I've had people saying I don't know what I'm doing. I've had a fan base saying that.
"So none of that stuff affects me. My job is to do the best I can for our players for our program, and to try to put us in the best position possible as a program to move forward, and to try to accomplish what we want to accomplish. I feel very confident that we're on the right path of doing that. It may not look like it right now. But I feel very confident in what we're doing and I feel very confident about the future of our program."
This season has come with obvious challenges brought on by the pandemic on top of trying to rebuild Pitt basketball. That's brought on adversity that sometimes Pitt has risen to face, but lately has had a hard time overcoming as the Panthers have lost seven of their last eight games.
"Sometimes you go through adversity, you go through difficult times and as I've told my guys all year," Capel said. "I told them that two of the greatest feelings, I think, a human being can have, for one, is a comeback. You find out who you are, you find out who's with you, who's in your corner, and what you're made of. People in this country love a great comeback story with a fall from grace and then all of a sudden the person comes back. In my mind I keep thinking of Tiger Woods when he won the Masters. You know the last time after everything that he'd been through."
"The second thing is when you finish something. And we have a chance to finish the season strong."
Pitt sits at 9-9 with a 5-8 ACC record after starting 8-2 overall and 4-1 in the ACC. But, Capel is right that finishing strong could change the outlook on a situation. Just look at Pitt football from this season when the team had lost four straight games to sink to 4-4, had been blown out by Notre Dame, and then Paris Ford opted out of the season. Pat Narduzzi turned that around to win three of their last four and come through with arguably one of his most exciting recruiting classes this offseason.
Capel still has that chance with three scheduled ACC games and the opportunity to play in the ACC tournament.
It's not time for Pitt to call it quits on Capel, as Heather Lyke most likely understands the unprecedented challenges the program faced in the wake of Stallings' disastrous two years. But it is time for Capel to deliver on better development of his players and show what can happen when more student-athletes buy into the program.
He's done that with Champagnie, who still leads the ACC with 18.8 points per game and 11.4 rebounds per game. Although, Champagnie's decision of whether or not to jump to the NBA looms large for the sophomore.
"Obviously Justin will have a decision to make at the end of the year," Capel said. "That's something we'll discuss at the end of the season, I've had discussions with his parents. We put together a plan of what we'll do after the season. Other than that, I don't know. You guys follow college basketball you see a lot of things happen. And so, You never know."
Even if Champagnie stays another season, Capel needs other players to buy in. One player who has that opportunity is Odukale, the presumptive new starting point guard.
"He's done some really good things for us this year," Capel said. "We feel like he's ready to step up into a bigger role."
We'll see how good of a job Odukale and Pitt's other players do in rising up to the challenge. Their first hurdle is this Sunday on the road against N.C. State, a team that beat Pitt at the Petersen Events Center by a single point just last Wednesday.
"They've been upbeat, they've been good, they've been spirited, and I think we've gotten better," Capel said of his remaining players. "And so that's what we're concentrating on."
That concentration certainly will be tested as more eyes focus on how Pitt responds in the coming weeks.
