Pitt's Jeff Capel Calls Out ACC Disrespect

Pitt Panthers head coach Jeff Capel continues to demand more respect for the ACC.

PITTSBURGH -- Frustration is growing among the ACC and its head coaches as the league continues to face what Pitt Panthers head coach Jeff Capel believes is an undue amount of disrespect from national media as it relates to postseason projections. 

Capel's Panthers are still a long way from the NCAA Tournament field after dropping five of their first six ACC games, but he still felt the need to stick up for the strength of the league as a whole as bracketologists nationwide create NCAA Tournament projections that feature only four ACC teams at most. 

"I try not to look at [bracket projections] because it doesn’t make sense to me," Capel said. "I don't understand it. I don't, for the life of me. Our league is really good, the teams in our league are really good, the players, the coaches — it’s way more than North Carolina and Duke.”

ESPN's Joe Lunardi has just four teams from the ACC - North Carolina (1 seed), Duke (3 seed), Clemson (8 seed) and Virginia (9 seed) - in his latest NCAA Tournament projections, with Wake Forest (No. 72 overall) among the "First Four Out" and Miami (No. 83 overall) being "considered." 

The ACC meanwhile has seven teams ranked among the top 75 of the NET and eight among the top 80. It has nine teams ranked in KenPom's top 75 as well. But the national perception of the league is the same as it has been for the past three years or more - that this historically good league isn't as strong as it once was. 

Capel believes that, around the country, spectators and national media look to North Carolina and Duke as standard bearers without taking a close enough look at the depth around them. 

"It’s frustrating,” Capel said. "If you look at the number of teams we have that are in the top 75 in the NET — just all of those things. So, I wish I had an answer for you, but unfortunately, I do not. I'm not a bracketology expert. I’m not a numbers expert. I know what my eyes see. It's frustrating that a lot of people sit behind a computer and look at numbers and that’s the metrics they come up with."

Capel added that there's a history of NCAA Tournament success for the ACC that indicates they're deserving of more spots in the Big Dance than anyone else would care to admit. Take his 2022-23 Panthers, for example, who snuck in as an 11-seed to the First Four and won two games, including an 18-point win over the Big XII's Iowa State. 

"We played last year, a team from the Big XII that was really good and we beat them pretty handily and we barely got in the tournament from what the numbers say," Capel said. "You know, we played a team from the SEC, that was a pretty good team — we beat them. And we beat both of those teams without our starting center." 

He pointed out Miami's run to the Final Four last season and alluded to a similar run from North Carolina the year before plus deep tournament runs from underrated Syracuse teams and others as evidence that 

"So, we get there, we perform, we do well but every year -- it's like this same thing over and over," Capel said. "Maybe we need one of the coaches to call some of these bracketology experts out. So I don’t know. I don’t know. I wish I had an answer."

Later that evening, Capel got his wish as former Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim, now a commentator on ESPN after retiring, called out his own network's lead Bracketologist live on air.  

Jim Boeheim thinks ACC has around six NCAA Tournament teams. And he sticks it to ESPN’s Joe Lunardi who only posts three. Says Boeheim: “To say there’s three teams in the tournament I don’t know what metrics you’re using. You’re using the blind man metrics is what you’re using

— Bob Holliday (@WRALBobHolliday) February 4, 2024

Whether Capel, Boeheim or any other ACC coach bemoans the lack of respect for the ACC publicly or not will, in all likelihood, not change much. But Capel refuses to sit idly or quietly as his team's home conference falls to the wayside in postseason conversations. 

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