Pitt has finally found a new men’s head basketball coach. Jeff Capel has accepted the job on a seven-year contract, according to Evan Daniels of 247 Sports.
Pitt hires Duke assistant Jeff Capel as next head coach, per report
Capel has previously head coaching experience at Oklahoma.
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Ricky O'Donnell has covered basketball at all levels for more than a decade at SB Nation. He’s currently the Associate Director of Programming.
Capel has been an assistant at Duke since 2011. Before that, he coached Oklahoma for five seasons, presiding over an Elite Eight run led by Blake Griffin back in 2009. Capel is known as a great recruiter, helping Duke bring in recruiting classes ranked in the top-two nationally each of the last five years.
This ends a long coaching search for Pitt. Former Rhode Island coach Danny Hurley chose UConn over the Panthers earlier this month. St. Bonaventure’s Mark Schmidt and Buffalo’s Nate Oats were among the candidates who turned down the job.
Pitt is coming off a winless season in the ACC and is looking at a massive transfer exodus. The program’s Kevin Stallings era was a disaster, and an expensive one at that.
Capel was seen as a potential successor to Mike Krzyzewski. It will now be fascinating to see who gets that Duke job when Coach K eventually retires.
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