Capel pushing Sooners’ buttons
Jeff Capel’s official title is Oklahoma men’s basketball coach.
These days, though, his official job is button pusher.
Capel has been pushing buttons like crazy, trying to motivate his Sooners, trying to figure out how to get them to play better. He’s benched players. He’s called them out in the media. He’s kicked the entire team out of the locker room and prohibited them from wearing OU garb during practice, bans that he only recently reversed after almost two weeks.
Capel changed his mind about the locker room and the practice gear earlier this week because he finally got the effort from his team that he’d been after all season. The Sooners played with energy in an overtime Bedlam victory Monday night.
And really, that’s all that Capel has been after. Effort and energy.
That’s because he knows this team already has plenty of talent. Willie Warren has NBA potential. Tiny Gallon and Tommy Mason-Griffin came to college with outstanding high school credentials. Then you throw in the likes of Cade Davis and Tony Crocker, who on any given night can defend well and score bunches, and you have a team with more talent than many, many college basketball teams.
And yet, the Sooners have already lost six games and put themselves in jeopardy of not making the NCAA Tournament.
This is a bunch whose win-loss record does not accurately portray how much talent it has.
That’s why Capel has taken to playing head games. He sees the potential. He sees the possibilities. Trouble is, he hasn’t been seeing the wins.
But the crack psychology seems to be working. The methods have been successful, and the messages have been received. Capel seems to have found some tactics that work, so if his team reverts to its old ways, he knows which buttons to push.
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I dont understand how some people who have played sports have the gall to critize the ones who have.