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Capel Progress

NGPittCali

Freshman
Jul 14, 2019
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Despite the naysayers out there, I believe Capel is on an excellent track to bring Pitt into the new Capel era of basketball. Obviously, this year's squad has holes and needs more, but there is now a light ahead and it is because of the Capel hire. HTP! Love the new recruits he is building a team of athletes and guys with upside. Like others have noted, I am very interested in the improvements with the returning talent. X, Trey, Toney, and especially Brown. A jump in Brown could change the trajectory of this upcoming season.
 
Despite the naysayers out there, I believe Capel is on an excellent track to bring Pitt into the new Capel era of basketball. Obviously, this year's squad has holes and needs more, but there is now a light ahead and it is because of the Capel hire. HTP! Love the new recruits he is building a team of athletes and guys with upside. Like others have noted, I am very interested in the improvements with the returning talent. X, Trey, Toney, and especially Brown. A jump in Brown could change the trajectory of this upcoming season.
Nicely said.couldn't agree with you more.
But there are many here that dont want to hear or admit that.
Capel turned literally nothing into something. Brought in 3 great recruits that wouldn't consider Pitt before with stallings.
Every team has holes that's why you recruit.
Most posters don't have patience but there are some probably to many that will never have anything good to say.
Watch them when or if pitt makes an elite 8, final four, or wins a championship.
As the saying goes "if you don't have anything good to say, dont say anything at all ".
They will be eerily quiet.
 
Most posters don't have patience but there are some probably to many that will never have anything good to say.

Stop with the "most posters" crap. Most posters on here are totally behind Capel
and what he's doing. There are some negative nellies who don't, but MOST of us are
really happy with all that he's done since he's been here. MOST of us see the
program heading upwards with Capel leading the way.
 
Stop with the "most posters" crap. Most posters on here are totally behind Capel
and what he's doing. There are some negative nellies who don't, but MOST of us are
really happy with all that he's done since he's been here. MOST of us see the
program heading upwards with Capel leading the way.
I can't speak for "most posters", but the majority of fans that sit near us are all very high on Capel and the direction of the program is heading in. A good many of those fans took a two year hiatus and came back last year.
 
Agreed -- I sat there for 2 seasons in the Pete during the Stallings Era?! I am so pumped for the future of this program. How much he got out of the "Stallings" players last year impressed me in such a short time about how good at player devlopment this staff is. They also are great evaluators of talent as we are seeing by them identifying so many top guys earlier than the blue bloods. Won't be long before we start winning some recruiting battles.
 
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True -- but I was really happy with the past class - we filled every hole we had and did it in a way that won't harm us in the future with really underrated players. Coulibaly is much better than his rating. Murphy has a chip on his shoulder and can flat out shoot. Hamilton is a banger down low that will get us 6-8 boards and 8-10 points a night catching and finishing the pick and rolls that Brown and Chukwuka were dropping routinely last year. Drumgoole is a complete player who can shoot, Champagnie to me is the only one I can't figure out where he will fit, guessing a similar role/game as Toney.
 
I am incredibly high and enthused with Capel. That being said, I was also disappointed in this past recruiting class. You can be positive on someone or something and still be disappointed.

We had holes at big, outside shooting, backup/future PG, and overall depth. We got:

- An experienced big who saw minutes on 3 teams that averaged 29 wins per season;
- A JUCO shooter that had several P5 offers, including TTU, and trained with Stef Curry;
- A 4* fresh shooter that had offers from every P5 conference;
- An experienced backup/future PG that had SEC offers;
- A 3 star wing; and
- A well-rounded 3 star PF that went 13, 7, 2.5 and 2 per game in the FIBA World Cup.

That's pretty good and basically represented everything that we needed without any filler. I would have rather had a big with a higher ceiling but Hamilton will be better than most of those guys this year and we get another crack at that position in 2020. If you are being fair, you have to give Capel a solid grade for this class.
 
How much he got out of the "Stallings" players last year impressed me in such a short time about how good at player devlopment this staff is.
I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I am curious about this point, as I didn't see much, if any improvement from the returnees. JFW played very well in the second half of the year, but it's hard to say how much of that was development versus him just being a grown-ass man, that is extremely streaky, and had gotten comfortable in the ACC. I think the other three hold-overs, plus Ellison based on his stats at St. Johns, regressed in year two. I guess you could say Chewy improved some, but I think that's mainly simply because he didn't float around the perimeter quite as much.
 
I don't think Ellison regressed - he was playing in a worse conference, I don't think he was as good as advertised and had a bigger role on a bad team at St John's. Chewy/Brown/Davis/JWF all showed better effort/motor/team play and defense over what they showed with Stallings. Without improved play from all of them we don't win 3 conference games. All that being said the ceiling isn't very high for any of them.
 
We had holes at big, outside shooting, backup/future PG, and overall depth. We got:

- An experienced big who saw minutes on 3 teams that averaged 29 wins per season;
- A JUCO shooter that had several P5 offers, including TTU, and trained with Stef Curry;
- A 4* fresh shooter that had offers from every P5 conference;
- An experienced backup/future PG that had SEC offers;
- A 3 star wing; and
- A well-rounded 3 star PF that went 13, 7, 2.5 and 2 per game in the FIBA World Cup.

That's pretty good and basically represented everything that we needed without any filler. I would have rather had a big with a higher ceiling but Hamilton will be better than most of those guys this year and we get another crack at that position in 2020. If you are being fair, you have to give Capel a solid grade for this class.

"An experienced backup/future PG that had SEC offers;" If you mean Horton--I believe most see him as a 2G and not a PG. However, he would allow McGowens to slide to PG if Johnson does leave early.
 
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I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I am curious about this point, as I didn't see much, if any improvement from the returnees. JFW played very well in the second half of the year, but it's hard to say how much of that was development versus him just being a grown-ass man, that is extremely streaky, and had gotten comfortable in the ACC. I think the other three hold-overs, plus Ellison based on his stats at St. Johns, regressed in year two. I guess you could say Chewy improved some, but I think that's mainly simply because he didn't float around the perimeter quite as much.
I think JWF, Brown, and Chukwuka, were all significantly better versions of themselves in 2018-19 than what we saw in 2017-18. All three of those guys showed significant growth in almost every meaningful statistical category, and IMO were better in the subjective “eye test.”

Ellison is a more difficult evaluation because we didn’t have any other games at Pitt in ACC play to compare. He certainly didn’t turn out to be the player he was hyped to be in his sit-out season, but I don’t see too much evidence of it being due to a lack of development versus the expectations that were set based on his status as the most athletic standout on an otherwise supremely limited 2017-18 roster.

Edit: I was curious, so I dug into Ellison’s stats a little more. To be honest, though he didn’t really “improve” compared to his two years at St. John’s - which it would have been surprising for him to put up *better* numbers in a tougher conference - he was pretty much the same player statistically at Pitt that he was at St. John’s. The only exception, as we all saw, is that his three point shooting fell off a cliff to 10% compared to the ~30% three point shooter he was earlier in his career. Had he shot roughly to his career average, our evaluation on his 2018-19 season would have probably been different. But otherwise he was pretty much the same player he was at St. John’s even with the step up in competition.
 
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We had holes at big, outside shooting, backup/future PG, and overall depth. We got:

- An experienced big who saw minutes on 3 teams that averaged 29 wins per season;
- A JUCO shooter that had several P5 offers, including TTU, and trained with Stef Curry;
- A 4* fresh shooter that had offers from every P5 conference;
- An experienced backup/future PG that had SEC offers;
- A 3 star wing; and
- A well-rounded 3 star PF that went 13, 7, 2.5 and 2 per game in the FIBA World Cup.

That's pretty good and basically represented everything that we needed without any filler. I would have rather had a big with a higher ceiling but Hamilton will be better than most of those guys this year and we get another crack at that position in 2020. If you are being fair, you have to give Capel a solid grade for this class.

"Stef"? Really?
 
I think JWF, Brown, and Chukwuka, were all significantly better versions of themselves in 2018-19 than what we saw in 2017-18. All three of those guys showed significant growth in almost every meaningful statistical category, and IMO were better in the subjective “eye test.”

Ellison is a more difficult evaluation because we didn’t have any other games at Pitt in ACC play to compare. He certainly didn’t turn out to be the player he was hyped to be in his sit-out season, but I don’t see too much evidence of it being due to a lack of development versus the expectations that were set based on his status as the most athletic standout on an otherwise supremely limited 2017-18 roster.

Edit: I was curious, so I dug into Ellison’s stats a little more. To be honest, though he didn’t really “improve” compared to his two years at St. John’s - which it would have been surprising for him to put up *better* numbers in a tougher conference - he was pretty much the same player statistically at Pitt that he was at St. John’s. The only exception, as we all saw, is that his three point shooting fell off a cliff to 10% compared to the ~30% three point shooter he was earlier in his career. Had he shot roughly to his career average, our evaluation on his 2018-19 season would have probably been different. But otherwise he was pretty much the same player he was at St. John’s even with the step up in competition.
Thanks for the response. Agree that Ellison is tough to judge, for sure.

I thought Brown played significantly worse outside a handful of games where he had the glimmer in his eyes and fire in his ass where he showed the potential that we'd all love to see in a much higher % of action.
 
I think the other three hold-overs, plus Ellison based on his stats at St. Johns, regressed in year two.


Ellison was the exact same guy for us as he was for St. John's. People's thoughts were clouded over by the moronic ramblings of a coach trying to save his job that Ellison was "by far the best player on the team" in practice.
 
Ellison was the exact same guy for us as he was for St. John's. People's thoughts were clouded over by the moronic ramblings of a coach trying to save his job that Ellison was "by far the best player on the team" in practice.
You're probably correct in that the hype contributed to the disappointment and I can't claim to have watched him play at St. John's, however, I struggle to understand how someone could from an average three point shooter to a horrific one.
 
You're probably correct in that the hype contributed to the disappointment and I can't claim to have watched him play at St. John's, however, I struggle to understand how someone could from an average three point shooter to a horrific one.

Ellison
The telling stat from what I read.
Is that he shot 65% from the foul line in minimal attempts his freshman year.
59% his second year.
Those are very telling signs, statistically.
 
Ellison was the exact same guy for us as he was for St. John's. People's thoughts were clouded over by the moronic ramblings of a coach trying to save his job that Ellison was "by far the best player on the team" in practice.

IMO, Ellison's 3-point % last season is very likely mainly a statistical aberration based on how he was used at St. John's vs at Pitt and given the consequent far lower numbers of 3-point shots taken in the season at Pitt. At St John's he shot 30 for 88 on 3's his last season there. At Pitt he only took 16 3s the entire season--making 3 of them. Keep in mind that some good 3-point shooters might sometimes take 16 3s in a single game and if they had an off game could go 3 for 16 before making up for it with another game when they might go 8 or 9 for 16 or similar. Capel used Ellison differently (more as a closer to the hoop guy) than he was used at St. John's and he was rarely shot 3s so that he wound up shooting way too few to be statistically significant--and, I suspect as well, some of his 3s taken could have been end of shot clock desperation time ones (although I don't know that for certain).

Ellison's career stats:

https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/players/malik-ellison-1.html
 
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Bottom line, Ellison was found to be a great athlete but just not a good a basketball player. Love the fact that Capel wasn’t sentimental about it and steered him to transfer.
 
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