Paul Zeise: Pitt got robbed against Notre Dame, but Jeff Capel's program has much bigger issues to address

Paul Zeise, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Mar 11, 2025

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PITTSBURGH — A horrific call by ACC officials had Jeff Capel crying foul Tuesday after the Panthers were knocked out of the ACC tournament by Notre Dame, and he has every right to be angry about it.

I’ll spare you the details, but in short, the refs called a foul on Zack Austin with 0.5 seconds left in a tied game, and Notre Dame’s Tae Davis hit a free throw to lift the Irish to a one-point win. It would have been a ticky-tack call in the first minute of a regular-season game. In the final minutes of a conference tournament game, it was a fireable offense.

“I've been coaching for 25 years,” Capel said. “It's the worst way I've ever seen to end a ballgame in my 25 years of doing this.”

I don’t blame Capel for being upset, but let’s not let the fact the Panthers bowed out in heartbreaking fashion overshadow the fact they once again lost because they didn’t play well enough to win.

Offensive execution was an issue with this bunch for the entire second half of the season. The Panthers were terrible down the stretch of a lot of close games. They found ways to lose by turning the ball over or taking bad shots late in shot clocks. On Tuesday, they had the ball with 20 seconds left, and Jaland Lowe stepped out of bounds on the baseline.

It makes perfect sense to me a team that is not great at executing in the half court on offense allowed itself to be dragged into a slog. Notre Dame wanted to slow the game down, make it a possession-by-possession game, make it as ugly as possible and hope it had a chance to win in the end. And that’s exactly how it played out.

Pitt never tried to assert itself offensively and seemed perfectly happy to play in that kind of game, even though it clearly favored the Fighting Irish. The game was in many ways a microcosm of this season that quite frankly couldn’t end soon enough.

It is yet another year when the offseason begins with a lot of questions about what is next. It is another offseason when people will spend a lot of time asking the very fair question: “Is Capel the right guy?”

I have to believe this was the Panthers’ last game this season, as it doesn’t seem likely they would accept a bid to the NIT, seeing as they didn’t last year. I’m not sure I love that decision, but this is a season that needs to end now so Capel and co. can get down to business trying to fix whatever it is that ails the program.

Capel is going to get another year to get it right, and it feels like he has been close for the last few seasons. I understand why Pitt would want to continue with him (not to mention it would cost a lot of money to replace him).

But when Pitt athletic director Allen Greene sits down to evaluate whether Capel is the guy for the future, there are a few troubling things about his resume that could at least be a reason for pause. The largest of them is this: In Capel’s last nine seasons as a power-conference coach (seven at Pitt, two at Oklahoma), he has led exactly one team to the NCAA Tournament.

That’s one time in nine seasons in an era when the bubble is so bad they might start considering the best high school teams to fill out the field of 68. He is also 55-79 in ACC games and has only twice had a winning record in the ACC, even though the conference has been way down in recent years.

Those are the numbers — the cold, hard facts — and those are a part of the story. Subjectively, I absolutely think giving Capel another year to figure it out is the right thing because he is a great role model, great face of the program, his players love him and I do believe he is a good recruiter.

There is so much to like about Capel and the program he has built, but he has to make some changes and needs to start winning more. We have seen good coaches who were struggling in the past who, with the right support and changes, turned it around, but it has to start immediately.

Greene has to step in and push the program forward. It may require coaching staff changes. It may require changes to the scheduling module Capel has used. It may require more commitment to NIL. It may require an examination of which players are getting paid and how much.

Everything must be on the table for Greene and Capel to get it right.

That has to be the goal going forward, and it has to be a serious commitment by both Greene and Capel to work together to fix the program. The men’s basketball program at one point was the crown jewel of the athletic department, but it has become a source of far too much embarrassment over the past decade.

Yes, Pitt was robbed at the buzzer against Notre Dame, but the Panthers have far greater problems facing them than a bad loss in a meaningless first-round conference tournament game.