STEVE DeSHAZO: Capel embraces role as face of the CAA.

Date published: 11/17/2004

RICHMOND--The old joke says the definition of mixed emotions is watching your mother-in-law go over a cliff in your new Mercedes.

For Virginia Commonwealth University basketball fans, it may be watching tomorrow night's game at Wake Forest.

The Rams get a rematch with the second-ranked Deacons in the second round of the Preseason NIT. You may remember Round One, when VCU nearly derailed Wake's NCAA title hopes in the tournament's first round before falling 79-78.

That exposure thrust 29-year-old coach Jeff Capel into the national spotlight and got him an offer from Auburn University (which he declined), and interest from several other larger schools.

An upset of Wake tomorrow might make Capel a virtual lame duck almost before his third season as a college head coach begins. Despite a short resume, he'll be at the top of the list of every school that will have a vacancy at the end of the year.

He's young, handsome and successful. He played for one of the greatest coaches ever, Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, and his dad won a couple of Colonial Athletic Association titles at Old Dominion.

The CAA is an upwardly mobile mid-major league with visions of grandeur. Capel can be a major catalyst for that growth--for as long as he chooses to stay.

"With his accomplishments last season, clearly going into this season, he's the face of the league," said Delaware coach David Henderson, a fellow Duke alumnus. "When you win the CAA championship and play the No. 1 team with a chance to beat them--and it was not that long ago--you've done something.

"Now what people are looking for is, what do you do to follow up. That's how you become the face of a league."

Fair or not, Capel is the poster boy in a league full of accomplished coaches, including George Mason's Jim Larranaga, Drexel's Bruiser Flint and Towson's Pat Kennedy. Capel doesn't ask for the attention--but neither does he shy away from it.

"I've been in this position since I was 16," he said at the CAA's recent media day. "When you grow up in North Carolina, and you're a pretty good basketball player, it's different. North Carolina is a basketball state.

Date published: 11/17/2004