A Heel of a Sooners Coach

MEMPHIS -- Of all the things a little boy growing up in North Carolina coveted in his bedroom, none was more precious than one of the Tar Heels posters on his wall, the one with Michael Jordan shooting a jump shot against North Carolina State.

"It was picture perfect form, his legs were spread out, and it had, 'The Tradition Continues,' " the now grown-up little boy cooed Saturday afternoon. "I just thought that was incredible."

Who's the little boy who was all grown up on Saturday? He's the coach who will try to knock off North Carolina on Sunday, Jeff Capel.

It is funny how things come full circle, especially Jeff Capel's basketball life. Born and reared in North Carolina. Fanatical as a child about the Tar Heels. Mesmerized by Mike Krzyzewski to the point of playing at Duke. Now about to meet his once beloved, then despised, Tar Heels for the right to get to his first Final Four as a coach. And he's just 34.

We could excuse him if the speed of this spin makes him dizzy. But he is not in such need. He appeared calm on the eve of the impending storm, the biggest game in his young coaching career.

"I grew up a Carolina fan," Capel admitted sitting at a dais in the bowels of FedEx Forum sporting a crimson-trimmed, cream-colored Sooners polo shirt. "I always told my mom and dad when I was younger, that when I grow up, I'm going to Carolina.

"Carolina was the first ACC [Atlantic Coast Conference] school to start recruiting me, and it was the summer going into my 10th grade year. When I was in 10th grade, I was actually in Chapel Hill. I went to quite a few games. When I was younger, my father was a high school coach. I used to always go with my dad to Coach [Dean] Smith's clinic.

"My father would take me up to Carmichael [Auditorium] and watch a lot of games. I was there when Kenny Smith broke his wrist against LSU.

"I thought that was where I was going to go," Capel continued to testify, "until I met Coach K."


The longtime Tar Heels fan didn't admit to getting brainwashed in Durham, N.C., where Coach K weaves his magic, or at least used to. Capel's alma mater, which got dropped by Villanova on Thursday, was last in the Final Four half a decade ago. Capel ultimately was wooed by with whom he would play, he said.

"I wanted to play with Grant Hill," he said. "But then also, as a freshman, I thought it [Duke] was more of an opportunity for me to play early. Duke would be losing Thomas Hill and Bobby Hurley, while North Carolina would be returning [Derrick] Phelps and Donald Williams. I thought it was more of an opportunity for me to go in as a freshman and earn playing time. So that ... was maybe the deciding factor towards the end."

This is a man who has been making mature rather than emotional decisions his entire life. That was how he wound up leaving his comfort zone of the southern East Coast for Norman, Okla.

Capel didn't say he regretted the decision to sport a different blue in college. But the Tar Heels did beat him with the Blue Devils all but one meeting in his four seasons, and it didn't come until the first of two meetings in his senior season. Capel's most memorable moment against the team he grew up rooting for: In a 1995 game at Duke, he hit a running 40-footer at the buzzer to send the game into overtime, where Duke lost.

The Tar Heels during Capel's years at Duke were stocked, at one time or another, by Jerry Stackhouse, Rasheed Wallace, Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison and/or Jeff McInnis. Or sort of like what Capel will lead the Sooners against Sunday afternoon.

He'll have Blake Griffin, the prohibitive player of the year, and a lot of hope in the rest of his starters who, save freshman guard Willie Warren, are little more than role players.

Capel said his college coach left him a message Friday night congratulating him on coaching into the Elite Eight. Capel said he caught up with Coach K later but they didn't talk strategy about playing North Carolina, which is just as well since North Carolina beat Duke both times this season.

Not that Capel needs any advice as the son of a coach who played for Coach K and now is in his seventh season as a head coach and has never suffered a losing campaign.



"The thing we have to do is, as best we can, control tempo," Capel said. "We can't play at their pace. No one in college basketball can play at the pace that North Carolina plays."

Capel knows not only from having grown up a North Carolinaophile. His younger brother did what he wanted to and played for the Tar Heels. Jason started on the Tar Heels' 2000 Final Four team and will be seated over his older brother's shoulder on Sunday just as he was Friday night.

"My brother's going to have on a ... red OU shirt, and he'll be cheering for us," Capel assured, "which he should. I know a lot of Carolina people may not like that, but he was my brother before he was a Tar Heel."

If Jeff Capel could drop North Carolina for the rest of his life, the least his little brother can do is suspend his allegiance for an afternoon.