Of course I would send my son to play for Capel. Why would I not? Capel has proven he can win, he has at the mid-major and major college level, not to mention the international level. He has proven he can develop players into NBA draft picks.
He obviously has high character. He has a tremendous family. His players seem to care about him a great deal. He can obviously motivate guys to give their all despite the circumstances around them.
Your post is asinine because of comments like these:
Jeff Capel at VCU - 79-41 (66% win%)...
Anthony Grant at VCU - 76-25 (75% win%)
Shaka Smart at VCU - 48-17 (74% win%)
Jeff Capel had one good year at VCU, and 3 10+ loss seasons. In fact, Capel has coached 9 years and 7 out of those 9 years he's had at least 10 losses.
About the only thing I agree with is Capel having high character and that he comes from a good family. His dad is/was a average coach as well (similar winning% as his son 63% vs 55%). I like him as a person and "I loved him as a player"...BUT he's just an average coach...161-96 = 63% win%. Answer this...why does/did a coach with such high character attract the lowlifes he had to dismiss? Give me a coach that can win more than 63% of the time and a good character guy for 1000 Alex.
It's always the easy thing to say, but I credit his two year success (at OU) to having an NBA all-star/#1 pick. In the two year Blake-era, Capel never won the conference and only managed one Elite Eight. He got spanked by Louisville in the 2nd round (30 point loss) in '07-08 and beat by 12 to UNC in '08-09. Tell me...where do you think Self, Coach K or Roy Williams would have taken that '08-09 team or do you think Louisville would have spanked any of their teams that bad? Quick, how many conference titles does Capel have in 9 years? 1 is the correct answer.
So I think this quote, "Capel has proven he can win, he has at the mid-major and major college level, not to mention the international level", is just not very accurate or is sparingly correct at best.
Develop players into NBA draft picks? Like who? Blake Griffin would be in the league even if he would have went to Bartlesville (Oklahoma) Wesleyan. I think Willie would have too and I bet if Warren chose another school, he would have went higher. Again that goes back to development. Does anyone really feel like Warren improved much from his freshman year or HS? Or did he digress? I recall him being much higher in mock drafts after his freshman year than he was after his sophomore year.
Cade Davis' improvement (or lack of)
He averaged 3.7 ppg and 4.7 ppg during his first two years when he played only about 13-14 minutes. In the 2009-10 season Cade played 31.8 mpg and only achieved 9.9 ppg. This year Cade is averaging 12.7 ppg in 35 mpg. I just don't see much improvement there. Has he improved his shooting? On 3-pointers, just .02% from 34% to 36% from his Jr. to Sr. season. His free throw shooting went from 77% to 71% in the same time span. He's also committing about 3 times as many turnovers. Where's the improvement? Cade's not the only one but he's someone that has played 4 years under "the great developer".
Willie Warren averaged 14.6 during his freshman season and 16.3 his sophomore season playing about the same amount of mpg. BUT that's because he shot about 2 fgs and 2 more fts per game. His TOs were up by 1.33 per game, FG% was down .04%, 3 pt% was down .07%...his assists only went up 1 per game for a guy trying to develop into a NBA pg. Also the team was minus Blake, so WW should have been an 18-20 ppg guy. Warren would have been the same player or better at almost any other place. He got to the league in spite of Capel.
Blake improved but how much of that was coaching vs. just the him having more free-reign. His FG attempts went up by almost 4 a game and his FT attempts went up by about 4 as well. So that's a chance for +12 ppg and Blake jumped +8 ppg. He did go up significantly in rebounding though. If you want, give Capel credit, I won't. I'd still bet that more guys have failed to develop under Capel than those that have improved.
I always hear "TMG, WW and Tiny were bad characters"...I think a good coach could have at least tamed WW and TMG...Tiny is similar to Cousins from Kentucky/Sacramento, even Calipari tamed him (somewhat) at UK. Cousins would have been kicked out of OU. Capel took those three guys, that should have made NBA rosters, and developed them into NBDL talent. Yeah, yeah character this, character that. Capel doesn't get a free pass for recruiting them and then not being able to harness their emotions. He sat with each kid before they came to OU, so he should have had an idea of what they were like. It's on him.
"He can obviously motivate guys to give their all despite the circumstances around them." - We must be watching two different OU teams. Who's motivated? Who plays defense? Who? Cade?...It means more to Cade and outside of him, there is hardly any motivated players. You could say Fitz because he transformed his body but he plays half-assed a lot more than he should. A good coach would teach Fitz how to stay out of foul trouble and teach Cam Clark/Tyler Neal/Nick Thompson/C.J. Washington to stop playing scared. A good coach would teach Blair how to shoot better than 24% and get more production than 1.3 assists for each turnover. A good coach would teach Pledger to be more well-rounded. Pledger doesn't provide any rebounding, assists, steals or blocks. He just shoots threes and turns the ball over.
Sorry for the length of my rant.
