Collected wisdom: Jeff Capel

Jeff Capel, 31, Fayetteville, N.C.

Answers began flowing in immediately with Tuesday's press conference announcing the new coach from Virginia Commonwealth who would replace Kelvin Sampson.

Capel gets strong endorsements from coaches

Today, the North Carolina native and former four-year starter for Duke, who still laces up his sneakers to play with his teams, provides plenty more in his own words.

I have been called an old soul before, but 31 is plenty old to be a head coach. I think I'm a mixture of both. I used to joke and tell my family that I was born in the wrong era. I do think like an older person in some areas. But I still have a lot in common with my players.

People have asked about me getting out on the floor and playing with my players. Some think it's a good tool for teaching, others wonder if it's a good idea. But it doesn't really concern me with what people think about that. I'm trying to make a connection with these guys. They don't know me yet. The current players (at OU) probably had to "Google" me when they heard who their new coach was. A lot of these guys didn't know who I was.

I'm a coach. I love helping and teaching, and I still like getting out and playing. If trying to demonstrate a point, I get out and demonstrate it to the players. It's not trying to get fans excited about a coach with a different style. It's just something the players and I have in common.

Listen, I love coaching, but there is nothing like playing.

One thing about my age and playing background is that players probably feel a kinship. We have the same taste in music and things such as that. Although I like East Coast rap and these guys from Oklahoma, they probably like the West Coast sound. I'm more of a Jay-Z and Nas guy. So there's that connection in a young way. But at the same time, I have been around the game so long and have always been around older people. There's a maturity about me that seems older than I am because of that.

Having a dad (Jeff Capel II) as a coach, playing for Coach K (Krzyzewski) and being around so many other people who have different ideas and opinions about basketball and how to do things, I've watched and learned and taken a lot from all of them.

My playing career at Duke is strange in that my freshman year (1994), we played in the national championship game, which was what is pretty much expected at that program. But my sophomore season was one of the worst for a Duke team (13-18).

It was miserable. It really was. You go from the ultimate game in college basketball one year and come back and have a season like we did my sophomore year, it was just miserable.

Because of the special tradition at Duke and the standards the program has, as a player, I felt like not only was I letting the fans down but former players. Grant Hill, Christian Laettner, Johnny Dawkins, all the great ones -- all the things they had turned that program into and we weren't living up to it that season. I felt like it was destroying everything. It made it even worse that our coach and leader wasn't there (because of back surgery). My grandfather used to tell me that you can learn something from everything. Good or bad, learn from it. I tried to take that lesson away from that year.

That second season (1995), I wasn't ready to play the role I found myself in.

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