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In a month known for having love in the air, it is in short supply for Pitt Panther head coach, Jeff Capel. There is no sugarcoating just how bad Capel’s teams have been in the month of February. This is not just a trend with his Pitt Panther teams, but this dates back to when Capel was the head coach of VCU and Oklahoma as well.
February is a very important month in sports, including college basketball.
The Super Bowl takes place in February, NHL and NBA teams start their playoff
pushes, and college basketball programs are polishing their tournament resumes this
month, with schedules mostly consisting of conference games. Unfortunately, this is typically
when Capel-led basketball teams perform the worst.
It wasn’t always this way.
In 2002-03’ and 04-05’, Jeff Capel led the VCU Rams to many February
victories. In fact, his impressive 8-game
win streak in February to end the 03-04’ season helped VCU earn the Colonial regular
season title, the conference tournament title, and a spot in the NCAA
tournament. That was just a year after VCU
had a 7-game win streak in February 02-03’, but fell short in their conference
tournament. Capel used this success at
VCU to get a head coaching job at Oklahoma from 2006 through the 2010-11’
season.
However, since those two great February stretches in
back-to-back years, Jeff Capel teams are 26-54 in games that are played in the
second month of the year. At Oklahoma,
he was 13-25 in these critical games. In
2006-07’, the Sooners ended the month on a 6-game losing streak. In 07-08’, they would end February on a
3-game losing streak. They were 3-5 in
February in each of Capel’s first two seasons with Oklahoma.
There was finally some success in February of 2009. Oklahoma started the month with a 4-game win
streak, finishing February with a 5-2 record.
Their 30-6 overall record on the season earned the Sooners a No. 2 seed in the NCAA
tournament, where they would eventually lose in the Elite Eight. Funny enough, Capel’s future employer, Pitt,
would also lose in the Elite Eight to Villanova that year, but thinking about that game still
makes my stomach turn.
The Elite Eight appearance also earned Capel two more seasons
at Oklahoma. Unfortunately, Capel could not
recover that success as the Sooners would go 13-18 in 09-10’ followed by a
14-18 record in 10-11’. These records were
largely caused by absolute collapses in the month of February. Oklahoma went 1-6 and 1-7 in the month of
February, respectively, with a 9-game losing streak to end the 09-10’
season. The Sooners would also end February
of 2011 with a 7-game losing streak.
These collapses ultimately led to the end of Capel’s career at Oklahoma.
Fortunately, Jeff Capel would get another chance at head
coaching with the Pitt Panthers. Unfortunately,
his Pitt career has been the least successful so far. In addition to having poor overall records in
his tenure, Capel’s Panther teams are just 3-22 in the month of February. They are currently winless in February this
season, in three games played so far. It
is just a brutal month for the coach when tournament resumes are supposed to be
built. Not only that, but typically February consists of all conference games which matter most.
In his last six seasons, Capel-led teams are just 5-35 in
February, and this year's Pitt team is getting worse.
They have been outscored 193 – 241 this month and suffered a humiliating
27-point defeat at the hands of the Virginia Tech Hokies Monday night.
This is not the recipe for success for college basketball
programs. A coach cannot continue to see
his teams get worse when the games matter most and be considered suitable for
the position. I am level-head enough to
understand the difficulties that Capel has faced at Pitt, and try not to call for his
firing after each loss, but a lot of these difficulties were self-inflicted. The conversation needs to be had following
the season as to if Jeff Capel’s career at Pitt should continue.