Jeff Capel: 'I Couldn't Worry About My Feelings' When Facing Duke

After playing 60 games at Cameron as a member of the Blue Devils and standing on the sidelines for 115 games at Cameron as a member of coach Mike Krzyzewski’s staff, Pitt coach Jeff Capel had his first game in the arena as a visiting coach on Tuesday night.

The challenge of facing No. 9 Duke took up much of his attention, so Capel wasn’t able to focus on his return to campus.

“I’m not sure I had expectations,” he said. “I was honestly just trying to concentrate on my team. As my dad would say, ‘We had enough to say, grace, over worrying about Duke,’ and being prepared for them instead of me worrying about my feelings of how I’m going to feel about coaching or walking in here. I was really just trying to lock into my team and be present in our moment. So I don’t know if I had expectations. I wanted us to come in and play well and put ourselves in a position to win, and we did that to an extent, but it’s still not good enough.”

Capel’s gameplan included trying to prevent Duke from getting the ball inside, even if it left players open on the perimeter. Guard Jordan Goldwire made them play, scoring a career-high 13 points for Duke. We wanted to try to clog up the game,” Capel said, “and we wanted to make some other guys make some shots that hadn’t done it on a consistent level all year. He stepped up and made some big time shots for them in the first half.”