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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE OPERATION BASKETBALLOctober 24, 2018Jeff CapelJared Wilson-FrameMalik EllisonCharlotte, North Carolina Q. Coach Capel, what appealed to you about the Pitt job? They came off a tough season. What did you see that appealed to you and what made you think it was an opportunity at this time? COACH CAPEL: Well, first and foremost, it was the opportunity to coach in the ACC. Since I got into coaching that was always a dream of mine was to have an opportunity to coach in this league. I grew up in this league. I grew up loving the ACC. I had the great fortune to be able to play in this league and then to have an opportunity to be a head coach in this league was something that appealed to me greatly. The second thing is that I knew the tradition of this program. Before all the conference realignment, Pitt was one of the best teams and programs in the Big East. And during that time the Big East and the ACC were the two best conferences. You could probably flip a coin and -- so you knew the tradition. You knew it had been done and the opportunity to do it again was there. There was a commitment to the program. There's a passion for the program. There's a pride in the program. And the third thing is that I had a chance to meet with and spend some time with our athletic director Heather Lyke and our chancellor, Chancellor Gallagher, and I felt their commitment to the program and I felt the connection with them most importantly. All these jobs are hard, every one. And I don't care who you are, you're going to face some adversity. There's going to be moments, maybe moments where you go through some difficult times. When you go through that you want someone that's in that foxhole with you that believes in you. That was probably as important as anything for me considering the things that I've been through in my career. And I found that. I felt that with Heather and Chancellor Gallagher. I trusted it. I believed in it. And I went for it. Q. You recruited in Richmond and Norman, Oklahoma and as an assistant in Durham. How would you contrast your experience for recruiting for the University of Pittsburgh? COACH CAPEL: Look, recruiting is hard, no matter where you are. But recruiting is the lifeblood of every program. And it's about trying to develop relationships, trying to identify the talent that you feel will fit what you want to do, your program, how you want to play, what you want your program to be about. Again, we have a lot of great things at the University of Pittsburgh to sell. We have a really good university. We have tradition. We have good facilities that we're improving on. We have an amazing city. We have a city that loves sports. I don't know how many people I've had come up to me, just random people, or people within the pro sports organizations there that have told me when this thing was going, when Pitt men's basketball was going, it was the toughest ticket in town to get over the Steelers or Penguins or Pirates. That's exciting to me. We have all those things to sell and it's now our job to get it done with recruiting. Q. Malik, you're a transfer, you'll be playing your first year at Pitt. You were named a team captain. What does that say about either your rapport with your teammates or you as a student-athlete being named captain right out of the blocks? MALIK ELLISON: First of all, it's a tremendous honor to be named team captain. I've dreamed about that my whole life, just being a captain at the college level. It shows how much trust the team and the coaches have in me. And I look forward to having a great year leading by example and being vocal as well. Q. Jeff, when you were head coach at VCU, I think you might have been the youngest head coach in the country at that time. And I wondered what coaching at VCU meant to you, how it shaped you and what -- how far you've come since being there? COACH CAPEL: It was an honor to be the coach there. I was named the head coach when I was 27 years old. I'd only had two years of coaching experience. I'd never been on the road recruiting. The first time I went out on the road recruiting was when I was the head coach there. But it was an unbelievable experience. It was a great learning experience. We were able to have some success during my time there. The thing I was most proud of during my four years as the head coach there is that we changed the culture of the program. I had the fortune of being an assistant for a year. So when I took over, I had a great idea right away of what needed to change. It was about implementing those changes, and look, we won games. We went to back-to-back postseasons which hadn't been done there in a while. But the thing that we did was we changed the culture. And that's the thing that I was most proud of that those young men that I had and I was very fortunate to be left a guy like Domonic Jones, who was an incredible ambassador as a student-athlete of what I wanted a VCU basketball player to be about. And we had a good first year but we really made the jump in year two. As those guys became acclimated with the way we were doing things, we were able to add a couple of pieces and then we were able to win the regular season. And in that time in that league you have to win the conference tournament, which we were able to do. It was a fun time. It was a great time. It was a great learning experience. The thing I realize now is how naive I was. I was incredibly naive. There was a lot things I didn't know. When I was there I was named head coach of University of Oklahoma at 31. And I was probably even more naive going to that level. So I think I've learned a lot through those experiences being back at Duke the last seven years and understanding how to run a program better, understanding the ins and outs and understanding really I think the business side of everything. But my experience at VCU, I look back with great memories, fond memories, relationships I was able to establish that I still have to this day. Q. Jared, question for you. How would you describe the style offensively and defensively that Coach Capel has you playing and how is that different from what we saw last year? JARED WILSON-FRAME: First word is just intensity. And attention to detail. And that's on both ends. On offense, I like to play fast. I like to push it up the floor. If not, we're looking for the best shot, like our shot, the best shot for us. Not just a good shot, but a great shot. Defensively just being intense, you know, and having pressure on that ball, and everybody else kind of helping out and being in the right spots off the ball also. Q. Jeff, what are your thoughts of playing not just two extra ACC games, but playing at the very beginning of the season, potentially in your first game? And also maybe reaction from Jared about the idea of starting the season with an ACC game? COACH CAPEL: That will be next year when we do that. It's exciting. I mean, with the ACC Network coming, look, we're already the most visible league in the country. And it's going to become even more visible. I don't think any coach will think you're ready for an ACC game to start. But I think for a player it's exciting. Look, you want to play in big games. And every ACC game is a big game. And the greater the challenge, the more difficult the challenge, you get to find out a lot about your team early and see exactly where you are early. And one of the great things about it is you're able to make some decisions, to see what it is you need to work on, to see maybe what you're pretty good at and to figure it out. By the time you get to the second ACC game maybe you're a little bit better, hopefully you're a little bit better. But it's exciting. It's exciting for the ACC Network. It's exciting to add even more visibility to our league, which I think is the best league in all of college basketball. Q. Wanted to get a quick reaction from you Malik, Jared touched on it what are differences heading into this year as opposed to last year with your new coach coming in? MALIK ELLISON: When Coach got here in the summertime, you could see in our workouts the intensity went up ten times more than it did last year. Even our practices, our practices are way more intense, way more attention to detail. I think we've gotten a lot better since Coach got here in the summertime and our team has gotten closer as well. I think it's just going to be a great season this year and I'm really excited. Q. When you go through the type of season you guys had last year and you lose your coach, what makes you want to stay at Pitt and what did you need to see and hear from the new coach coming in to make you want to stay at Pitt? MALIK ELLISON: I think for me, I didn't play last year, but it was equally as hard for me to go through a losing season like we did last year. And I think the main thing with Coach Capel coming in, just seeing how much of a hard worker he is and how big he is on family and just being together and just being tough. I think that right there really opened a lot of guys' eyes on the team and it made us realize what it's going to take to win at this level. Coach Capel has won at every level there is in college. He played a national championship. He coached in the NCAA Tournament. He's coached under Coach K and also been around the U.S.A. Team. So the levels of success that he's been around, I think it's just really rubbing off on us. And we know what it's going to take for us to win. And I think we'll have a great year. JARED WILSON-FRAME: Touching on what Malik said, as far as Coach Capel's basketball pedigree and in his mind, when he first got the job the first conversation we had, already knowing things about him, seeing him during the ACC, you know just knowing his track record, that jumped off the page to me. And when he touched on the importance of togetherness and family and attention to detail, that really hit home for me. And I never really planned on leaving the program to be honest, talking to the athletic directors, on what they were asking me what I was looking for in a head coach and other players who were leaning towards staying, when they hired Coach Capel it was almost a no-brainer, I told them when we talked on the phone I already planned on staying once I saw he was going to be the head coach before I talked to him. Since he's been here like Malik said from the summer workouts to day one, I know myself I was dead tired. I couldn't even move, almost. But that was a motivational thing for me. It was kind of a wake up call, like you do need to work a little harder. You do need to get a lot better. And he's shown great attention to us and care towards us as far as getting better every day and it's a trust in him and like Malik said he's brought us closer together as teammates and as men and he's kind of an example of what we're striving to be as men in our life. And he was also that on the court as a basketball player. Q. You obviously grew up in a basketball household. What influence did your father, Jeff Capel, Sr., have on your coaching philosophy and the way you interact with your players? COACH CAPEL: You know, my coaching philosophy, I had a chance to coach with my dad for a year. That was my introduction into coaching on his staff at Old Dominion. I thought he did an amazing job under very adverse circumstances that year. That was his last year. He got fired at the end of the season. Kind of going into it knew that was going to happen. And it was amazing to me how incredibly positive he was with his team that year with how he showed up every day, we showed up as a staff every day and that team showed up every day and they got better. They got better as men. They got better as a team and we competed and we fought every day. And so the attitude that he brought, that's something that I know. But those are things he taught me growing up and so his influence on me is more as a man, as a father, as a husband, probably more than anything. Now, growing up, from the time he was a high school coach, we always had players in our house. My dad was big on that whether when I was little when Jason and I were little, they were our baby-sitters, up until he was at Wake Forest as an assistant. They became like our big brothers. I remember when I was younger when he was a coach at Pine Crest High School, I used to say: When I grow up, I want to play defense like Johnny Hines, want to jump like Antonio Johnson and play hard like Bobby Collins and shoot like Bernard McNair those were the guys I wanted to be like but they were always around and so team has always been sacred to me. Being part of a team, being around the team and things like that and I feel the great fortune that I've been able to be a part of that as a player. I've been able to be a part of that as a coach, as an assistant and as a head coach and I get a chance to do it again. And there's a spirit when I walked into this building, I remember walking into this building a lot with my dad. My dad was an assistant here when the Bobcats came back and I tried to sneak into his old office. They have a punch code. I couldn't get in there. But there's a spirit here especially being back in this state that brings me back to incredible memories of my dad. Q. Jared, I'm not trying to walk you toward an answer but with Jason Capel being on the bench as an assistant coach, are you feeling that sense of family? Is it penetrating what the student-athlete's experience is all about? JARED WILSON-FRAME: Definitely. When you see the way him and coach interact with each other and just the bond and trust they have in what they're saying to each other, that kind of helped us be like that with each other and when me and Malik we're first and foremost me and Malik will get on each other before we get on anybody else and just saying that we have to hold it down as leaders of the team. That came from Coach Capel and Jason Capel, just the camaraderie and chemistry they had together and the rest of the staff as well. The energy that O'Toole brings in and the mind that -- I'm not going to go on too much O'Toole's energy -- but Coach Brown and the togetherness they had, they're all like brothers. They all could have been Coach Capel. All last names could have been Capel that's how it seemed when they came in. That's rubbed off on me and Malik and the rest of the team as well. Q. Malik, we just heard Jared talk about leadership styles. Leadership is more than yelling and screaming and high energy. How would you describe the style of leadership that the two of you have? MALIK ELLISON: I think me and Jared, you know, we lead by example first and foremost. And I think also vocally, especially Jared. He has a very powerful voice. He's able to attract a lot of ears, a lot of listeners. And for myself as well, I tend to get along with my teammates and I tend to just lead by example as well. I'm a hard worker. Jared is a hard worker. So I think both of us just, that's just a God-given talent that we have of leadership, just being able to rub it off on our teammates. Q. Jared, you can't say the same thing he just said. So what are your impressions about leadership? JARED WILSON-FRAME: Just I think one of the things me personally growing up, my father wasn't around that much. So my mother was kind of that role. And she played that role for us. And I grew up in a house and it was five of us in the house, one mother. Two girls. One of which was way younger than the rest of us. And the oldest brother left to college when I was 11 years old. And he went to Moore House College in Atlanta, Georgia. That's really far from Hartford, Connecticut. And I think just having to look out for my younger siblings all the time, going to the same schools and not even the same schools, having to pick them up from the bus stop and things like that and make sure I was taking care of them at home and I was at a age where I didn't even know very well how to take care of somebody else. I think that stuff for me growing up kind of led me to just become a natural leader and kind of have a natural voice and mind to just know that I have to kind of take the initiative and show how it's done sometimes and I've brought that to people I've been around my whole life. And I see that same thing in Malik. I'm not speaking on his life situation growing up, but I just know from the talks that we've had that, you know, he's had the same experiences that shaped him as a young man to be a natural leader. That's just something that rubs off on each other every day and it rubs off on the rest of our team to just kind of be together and kind of be able to take that first step forward and not have any fear in your heart and kind of be brave about it. Q. Fast forwarding into the future because I just looked into the schedule and Duke comes to Pitt this year. But the day will come when you go to Cameron Indoor Stadium, a place you played and coached alongside Mike Krzyzewski. Do you have any idea what that will be like to come back as the head coach of Pitt? COACH CAPEL: Not really. I've tried to concentrate on the present and concentrate on the moment we're in right now and worry about our team and our program and trying to build and trying to get better and in doing that understanding how we have to fight each day and we have to cherish each day. Look, I love my alma mater. I always will. I have an incredible deal of respect and love for the man that I played for. All of us that played there were incredibly lucky and fortunate that he's still there. And so it's something that bonds all of us. Duke is a special place. Cameron is a very special place. And I know when that time comes, I'm sure it will be emotional. I'm positive of that. But it's not something I've given a lot of thought to. My focus has been right now on our program and what we have to do to build this thing the right way and to build it with a great foundation that's sustainable for a very, very long time. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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