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Capel returns successfully, despite loss

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Staff

Eddy Landreth
By Eddy Landreth
Staff Writer
The upperclassmen players in 1957 and 2005 are probably the only Carolina basketball players, other than those who played from 1998-2002, who can full understand the extreme swings actually possible for UNC basketball.

Jason Capel is one of those. He played on a Final Four team in 2000 and a team ranked No. 1 in the country for a decent run in 2001.

Then the bottom fell out as it never has at UNC. Second-year coach Matt Doherty and the Tar Heels melted into an 8-20 morass. The team underwent a near-revolt after the season, and the seniors left and have rarely returned.

Capel made it back last Saturday and brought along his Appalachian State team. Following in the footsteps of his father and brother, Capel has become a collegiate head coach.

“I haven’t been back here a lot,” Capel said. “I came in ’05. … I came for the 100-year deal; I came to my wife’s graduation. It was good to come back. It was good to see a lot of faces I know, familiar faces, people who meant a lot to me. It was good to be home.”

The crowd showed its approval and gave him a nice ovation.

The Tar Heels won 97-82, as expected, but Capel’s Mountaineers handled themselves well. Carolina would race to a big lead, only to have ASU fight back – all night. The Mountaineers actually outscored the Tar Heels in the second half, 50-49.

“You have to congratulate Jason and his club for continuing to play and doing a nice job defensively and making some shots,” UNC coach Roy Williams said. “At times I thought we did a nice job defensively, but then in that stretch in the second half … we had our biggest lead at 29, all of a sudden it was 15 or something like that.”

Capel has had to rebuild this team from last season. He has six new players, and Appalachian State has gotten off to a rough start at 4-6.

But if the team responds to Capel and the challenge as it did on Saturday, the Mountaineers should be able to compete in the Southern Conference.

The Tar Heels provided the best collection of talent ASU will see this season, so the Mountaineers should now know they can compete if they listen to their coach and play hard for 40 minutes, just as they did against UNC.

“Nothing can prepare you for what you were going to see out there, but we tried to simulate as much as possible,” Capel said. “We’re proud that we competed. We didn’t just play hard. We competed. We didn’t take a step back when they punched us in the mouth.

“We kept coming forward. We got down 29 and we stayed together. That is part of the process [of building]. We fought them tooth and nail and gave it our best shot. It’s something we can build upon and carry over to our next game.

“Everything they ran, I knew it was coming,” Capel said. “We tried to simulate all week how fast the break was going to be, Tyler Zeller. But nothing can prepare you for a 7-footer running that fast. It’s just impossible to do.”

Just as Saturday should have prepared his team, Capel said his career at UNC readied him for what life eventually throws at all of us.

“It prepared me for everything, not just in my profession but life,” Capel said. “You work hard in life because you want to achieve great things. At the same time, things can go south on you.

“What are you going to do? How are you going to respond? It was a dream of mine to come here. Some great people recruited me here. People treated me pretty well. Those are people I will love forever.”

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