While certainly not to the level of a Mike Krzyzewski or a Christian Laettner, there are few in college basketball more closely associated with Duke than Jeff Capel.
He started as a freshman for the Blue Devils in the NCAA championship game in 1994. He made one of the most memorable shots in program history, a half-court buzzer-beater that sent its game against North Carolina in 1995 into overtime. When one of the most iconic rappers ever was photographed wearing a Duke basketball jersey, it was Capel’s No. 5. Over the previous seven years as an assistant coach, he played a bigger role than perhaps anyone into shaping the Blue Devils into the preferred destination for some of the country’s top one-and-done talent.
That attachment he has to his alma mater, though, doesn’t produce any sense of vitriol toward its most bitter rival. As he prepares to face North Carolina for the first time as Pitt’s head coach Saturday, Capel wasted little time downplaying whatever emotional angle there could have been headed into the matchup.
“I never hated Carolina,” Capel said Thursday. “It was a big-time rivalry when I played and when I coached, but I never hated them. For me, there was never hatred for that program.”
It’s more than just a lack of animosity for a school that, based on his background, one would reasonably assume he would hate. There’s an outright affinity, one that can be traced back to his childhood.
Growing up in Fayetteville, N.C., about 75 miles from Duke’s campus and 70 miles from North Carolina’s, Capel was a Tar Heels fan, enamored with coach Dean Smith’s star-studded teams led by the likes of James Worthy, Sam Perkins and, of course, Michael Jordan. As he grew into a talented high school player, that early love grew into something more.
“I used to tell my parents when I was little that when I got older, I wanted to go to Carolina,” Capel said.
By the time he developed into a star player at South View High School in Hope Mills, N.C., North Carolina was one of the first ACC schools to offer him a scholarship. Given his childhood allegiances and his profound respect for Smith, that was admittedly where Capel was leaning on committing.
Circumstances, however, changed.
“Then I met Coach K,” Capel said with a smile.
Following his first unofficial visit to Duke, when he got the chance to sit down and talk with Krzyzewski, his mind was made up – this was where he wanted to play and this was the coach with whom he wanted to entrust his future. It was a difficult decision, Capel said all these years later, but for him, it was the right one.
Still, even after all of his hotly contested matchups against North Carolina both as a player and coach, there was no hostility that lingered. If anything, it was quite the opposite.
“I always had a great deal and still do have a great deal of respect for that program because I know the kind of microscope they’re under,” he said. “There are a lot of similarities between the program where I played and them. There’s none of that [hatred].”
Down the Pitt bench from Capel on Saturday will be someone with a much tighter bond to North Carolina and a much deeper, far more undying love for the Tar Heels – his younger brother, Jason, who played for them from 1998-2002.
As recounted in a Jan. 2017 Players Tribune piece Jeff Capel wrote about his late father, Jason Capel, at the time a top-10 recruit nationally, had narrowed his list of college choices down to four – North Carolina, Old Dominion, Florida State and Seton Hall. Though he could have swayed his son to Old Dominion, where he was the head coach at the time, Jeff Capel II bypassed what would have been a massive recruiting coup because he felt he needed to do what was best for his youngest son.
“Son — you have North Carolina on there because that’s where you’ve always wanted to go,” Capel wrote. “That’s the school you have on here because of you. And I want you to listen to me closely, because this is important: You are a great player. And the coach in me would love to coach you. But the father in me? The father in me knows that North Carolina is the best place for you to go.”
Jason Capel went on to an accomplished career with the Tar Heels, who he helped lead to a Final Four in 2000 and with whom he was a two-time all-ACC selection. In 2001, at the end of Jason Capel’s junior season, his father was fired at Old Dominion, but he endured that setback knowing he did the right thing.
Though Jason Capel will, according to his brother, “get back to rooting for” North Carolina following Saturday’s game, there’s little mistaking which program with which the pair most closely identify.
“I’m a Pitt guy now,” Jeff Capel said. “This is a huge game. It’s our first conference game. It’s a home game. We’re going to have the best crowd we’ve had all year and I want to make sure our team is prepared as best as we can to put us in a position to have an opportunity to play well.”
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG
First Published: January 3, 2019, 10:52 p.m.
