RICHMOND, Va -- As hard as it might be to imagine, Jeff Capel once was just another basketball coach, handing out resumés at the Final Four, hoping to land a job as an assistant coach somewhere, anywhere.
Imagine that.
Capel got a job as an assistant coach at VCU for the 2001-02 season.
Then, he was promoted to head coach at VCU at the age of 27. He was the youngest Division I head coach in the country at the time.
After winning one Colonial Athletic Association title, taking the Rams to one NCAA tournament and an NIT appearance, Oklahoma came calling.
Capel accepted the job in 2006.
Now, he is the coach of one of the top teams in the country in one of the toughest basketball conferences.
Tomorrow night, he brings his Sooners to the Siegel Center to play VCU.
The game is part of a deal that was in Capel's VCU contract. If he got a job at a higher-rated school before his VCU contract expired, he was obligated to play a home-and-home series with VCU.
Some coaches try to buy their way out of such agreements.
Capel, 31, and the Sooners are showing up. VCU played in Oklahoma last year.
"I know how hard it is to get someone to come in and play you [at VCU], let alone a high-major program," Capel said. "It never happened when I was there."
Last year, Capel's Sooners reached the round of eight in the NCAA tournament, losing to North Carolina, the eventual national champion.
He coached Blake Griffin, the national player of the year and the first player taken in the NBA draft last summer.
Coaches want to coach great players. They want to make a nice salary. Most of all, though, men's Division I basketball coaches want the chance to get to the Final Four of the NCAA tournament as often as possible.
"Definitely," Capel said. "You want to get to a place where, realistically, you feel you have a chance to compete for the national championship.
"I thought Oklahoma did. They'd already been to the Final Four and the Elite Eight. I felt like we had a chance last year. I thought we might have been a concussion away during the conference season."
Griffin suffered a concussion in the first half against Texas and sat out the rest of the game. Oklahoma lost. He missed the next game against Kansas, and Oklahoma lost again.
"Who knows what happens if Blake doesn't get that concussion," Capel said. "Maybe we're a No. 1 seed and don't have to play North Carolina until the Final Four."
At Oklahoma, Capel is able to recruit top players in the country. At VCU, Capel had to identify unheralded players, then hope they signed with VCU before the teams from the power conferences realized what they had missed.
"This is a terrible thing to say, but when I would recruit for VCU, especially in the July period, I hoped some of the main kids we were recruiting would not play too well.
"If they played too well, the high majors would start recruiting them. Any coach at that [mid-major] level who tells you different is lying. Here, I don't have to worry about them playing too well. I just have to recruit them."
Capel comes from a basketball background. His father, Jeff Capel Jr., coached at North Carolina A&T and Old Dominion and now is an assistant for the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats.
And Capel played at Duke for Mike Krzyzewski.
Capel might be where he is today without making his stop at VCU. But no one can say for sure. Dr. Eugene Trani, now VCU president emeritus, and then-athletic director Dr. Richard Sander saw Capel's potential.
"He spent a year as an assistant, and I thought he displayed great character, great intelligence and the players looked up to him," Trani said. "Dick Sander and I started talking about what a wonderful coach he would make.
"When Mack McCarthy left after that season, we had no second thoughts whatsoever about making Jeff our coach. He's a first-class person. He's one of the best young coaches in the country."
Not everyone saw what Trani and Sander saw. Capel's promotion did not go without questions and criticism.
"We all had to endure the things that were said about us," Capel said. "People thought they were crazy. They thought I was in over my head, that it was some type of publicity stunt, that I hadn't paid my dues, that Coach K's silver spoon was in my mouth.
"But Dr. Trani and Dr. Sander believed in me and provided me with the resources to have a little bit of success."
Trani plans to attend the game tomorrow night.
"As far as I'm concerned, there will be no losers," Trani said. "He has fulfilled the contract. I'm excited he's coming, and I hope it's a great game."
More than just Capel's address has changed. He and his wife Kanika have two daughters, Cameron, 2, and Sydney, five months. His wife teaches at Oklahoma's law school.
"Life is good," Capel said. "We've been incredibly blessed.
"I still keep in touch with people at VCU. For 40 minutes, or longer depending on how the game goes, we'll be opponents. Then, I'll put my VCU pompoms on and pull for them the rest of the year."
