Jeff Capel

It was ACC basketball media days over the past few days in Charlotte.

Lots of great conversations happening between Tim Donnelly and Dennis Cox, who were able to talk to pretty much every major coach here in North Carolina, plus a few others, Jeff Capel, Pat Kelsey of Pit, Pat Kelsey of Louisville, among others.

They had a chance to talk with Steve Forbes, certainly Justin Ganey.

We'll talk Pac here in about 20 minutes.

I'm starting right now in Western Pennsylvania, and I'm going to go to Pitt.

Now, Jeff Capel, there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding his job status at the end of the season.

Pitt made a move to bring him back, and Jeff Capel absolutely crushed the transfer portal.

You bring in talented transfers who have done it at the power conference level.

I know they've moved around a lot, but I'm a believer in Nate George's talent.

We got to see if it affects winning.

We got to see what comes out in the wash.

But I think Pitt is a team under Jeff Capel that has the talent in place to surprise in the ACC.

I, I think he's got 'em in the chamber.

But I, I was at ACC Tipoff for ACC basketball the, the past couple of days, and, um, I was talking with, uh, what was it, Jeff Capel, uh, the coach of, of Pitt, who is now or was a, a Duke basketball player.

And at one point in time, I forget even what we were talking about, he did go like, "And we're a basketball conference.

Sorry to all the, the, the football players and football, uh, fans out there." And, and in my mind, my mind went right to, like, "If Dave Doeren can work this in somewhere, he's definitely [laughs] gonna kind of find a way." Anytime somebody puts basketball over football, I-

So I think RMU, looking at the rosters, I think is probably a good bet for top three preseason team.

We'll see how people feel about Green Bay with some of their late five-for-five additions, but RMU has a good shot, and Pittsburgh hasn't added anyone, but they're having 11 transfers this offseason, a new... look roster with plenty of depth, but Jeff Capel is on the hottest of hot seats, and he's going to have to find a way to get it done.

But, you know, you have proven ACC players like Nate George and Ben Adongo and former five-star Jalil Bethea.

I think there's some potential for Pitt to possibly be a surprise team in the ACC, although, you know, as we've seen in the past with Capel's teams, you know, transfers doesn't necessarily prove correlation to being a good team.

It's fun to look at them now, and there are eight current coaches.

So there's, you know, Jon Scheyer at Duke, there's Tommy Amaker at Harvard, there's, uh, Jeff Capel at Pittsburgh, Chris Collins at Northwestern, Johnny Dawkins at UCF, and the only th- the only problem he has is he has to play in the Big 12.

Uh, otherwise, you know, it's hard for him to emerge there, but he's doing great.

Uh, Kenny Blakeney is at Howard.

Brandon Cummings coming from Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh's a mess with Jeff Capel, so trying to get a fresh start here with Penny at Memphis.

And then Rehards Vavers was an improving quarterback player at Washington State that I liked a lot, hardworking guy on the glass at 6'7", pretty good defender.

So they built this team more as a lot of guys are going to have very defined roles, whereas other Memphis teams, I think, have just had an abundance of scoring and dominant rim play.