At first glance, little about Pitt’s game Monday against Monmouth was remarkable or even noteworthy.
It was a chance for the Panthers to rebound from a deflating 15-point loss to West Virginia last Friday, and they’d have the opportunity to do so against a team with a junior guard, George Papas, who had a moment of viral fame three nights earlier with a dunk in the waning seconds of a 55-point loss at Kansas.
Other than that, there was very little differentiating it from the dozen or so other games across the country that night in which a program from one of college basketball’s major conferences hosted an opponent from a smaller school it paid almost six figures to be there.
To Monmouth coach King Rice, though, there was a greater meaning to the gathering. For years, Rice has had a relationship with Pitt coach Jeff Capel and his family, including Capel’s younger brother and Pitt assistant Jason Capel —and, especially, Capel’s late father. Monday marked not only the opportunity to coach against someone who he has been close with for some time, but also the chance to get a closer look at a Panthers program he has been watching with interest from afar.
The bond began in college, when Rice played at North Carolina, taking him from his hometown of Binghamton, N.Y., to the area of the country in which the Capels were intimately involved in the basketball community. After an accomplished career with the Tar Heels, he entered the coaching ranks, serving as an assistant coach at various programs (including Illinois State, where he worked under former Pitt coach Kevin Stallings for five years).
In those early years, he found something of a mentor in Capel’s father, Jeff Capel II, who was a head coach at Fayetteville State, North Carolina A&T and, ultimately, Old Dominion. At that time, Rice, fresh off his college stardom, was admittedly “kind of hard-headed” and began his coaching career with a measure of bravado. He believed himself to be an elite recruiter who had a bright future in the profession and often felt the need to let others know that was the case. In the elder Capel, he found a steadying, humbling presence in a fellow black man who could pull him aside and offer advice on how to navigate the profession.
“He calmed me down a lot,” Rice said Monday. “He was such a good man. If you talked ball, he always had a smile on his face. He was always willing to help a younger coach. There are 300-something schools and there are probably 25, 24 minority head coaches. Any time you had a chance to get mentored by someone who looked like you that took the time …he was a head coach at a few places, but he took the time to just talk to you about being respected in this business and carrying yourself the right way and trying to forge the path for younger people behind you to have a chance to sit in the seat also.”
Rice digested those words and used them as a guiding force to advance in the profession. Following a five-year run as an assistant coach at Vanderbilt, where he again worked under Stallings, Rice was hired at Monmouth, his first college head coaching job. Though the program has taken a step back of late, going 26-45 over the past two-plus seasons, Rice led the Hawks to a 55-15 record from 2015-17, twice winning Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference coach of the year honors.
Even as his own career advanced, Rice kept an eye on Capel’s oldest son. He watched as Capel, who was named VCU’s head coach at age 27, led the Rams to the NCAA tournament before being hired at Oklahoma at 31. He found success there, helping the Sooners win 30 games and advance to the Elite Eight in 2009, but was fired two years later. Then came a seven-year stint as an assistant under Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, his alma mater, where Rice believed Capel matured. Now, the coach and man he saw from the opposite bench Monday is much different from the upstart he once knew.
“When you put that all together, you see a man coaching,” Rice said. “He was the young guy that was going to change the world when he was younger. Now he’s a man. He’s probably a great father, a great husband. He has watched and helped Coach K build, if not the best program, one of the best programs. When you sit that close to someone who is as good at this business as Coach K, just sitting next to him, you’re going to learn.”
Capel has known Rice for decades, which, at age 44, represents a majority of his life. When he was first recruited out of high school, North Carolina was among the schools he was considering, allowing him to connect with players like Rice, who he remembers being “always incredibly cool with me.” From there, the two kept in touch and from those conversations came a mutual feeling of respect.
“I think he had a great deal of respect for my dad,” Capel said. “I know my dad had a great deal of respect for him. I think my dad was someone who maybe he leaned on in the profession and went to. I’m happy with the success he has had as a coach and what he has done there at that program.”
Part of that respect comes from what Capel sees as a familial quality to the way Rice runs the Monmouth program. In his time with the Hawks, Rice has hired several of his former Tar Heels teammates – from Brian Reese to Derrick Phelps to J.R. Reid – to their first college assistant coaching jobs, some of whom have since moved on to bigger programs.
“That program, just like the program I played for, you take care of each other,” Capel said.
As impressed as Capel has been with Rice, the reverse is just as true. Rice remarked Monday about how he has seen Capel embrace Pittsburgh as a city since being named Pitt’s head coach in March 2018. Even while he coaches in New Jersey, he keeps up with what the program’s account posts on Twitter, namely videos like the one where Capel explains to his team his “brick by brick” mantra.
From what he has seen, Rice believes that, under Capel, Pitt will get “back to where all of you would love to have it.”
“Any time you take over and you have a former player and all the former players that went to a place like this and you embrace it and get them back in, it shows the kids how powerful Pittsburgh basketball can be,” Rice said. “I think he has embraced that, just from watching it on Twitter. You see them being better already.”
First Published: November 20, 2019, 5:46 p.m.