NCAA Basketball: 5 head coaches that need to win now in 2021-22 season

Jeff Capel (Pittsburgh)

He led Oklahoma to the Elite Eight and took VCU to an NCAA Tournament, but Capel is still struggling to get his footing at Pittsburgh. Capel was a guard under Mike Krzyzewski at Duke in the mid-90’s and spent seven years on his coaching staff, sandwiched between his head coaching stints with the Sooners and Panthers. He arrived at Pittsburgh in 2018, inheriting a program that had lost every single one of their ACC games, giving him quite the project on his hands.

A few years before Capel’s arrival (under current TCU coach Jamie Dixon) Pittsburgh was a perennial NCAA Tournament team. In his first three years, the Panthers have yet to even come close to repeating this kind of success. They’ve finished below .500 in each of Capel’s first three seasons, with this past season’s 12th place finish in the ACC their high mark in conference play. Overall, their 15-38 mark in ACC play is not going to cut it.

Pittsburgh was picked to finish 14th this season by the ACC voters. Unless Capel can pull a rabbit out of his hat, it sure looks like the Panthers aren’t headed back to that success in the near future. Capel brought Blake Griffin and an Elite Eight run to Oklahoma but has yet to recruit or succeed at the same level with the Panthers. At the very least, he needs a winning season and to make considerable strides in conference play. Nobody expects Pittsburgh to suddenly finish near the top of the ACC, but Capel needs to demonstrate progress to keep his job.