OU’s Jeff Capel Preaches Submission

Originally Published: Feb 22, 2010 3:22 PM CDT

David Carty
Oklahoma Sports Staff Writer

LAWRENCE, Kansas -- How would you like to be awoken from your sleep at midnight to the sound of your Kansas hotel’s fire alarm? Even worse, you and your team – a struggling bunch – are forced to wait in the lobby for over an hour while the problem is resolved.

“Yeah, it was exciting,” said a tired Jeff Capel in his weekly Big 12 teleconference.

He’s seen those kind of occurrences before; it briefly reminded him of his playing days. “Initially, I thought it was maybe a [Kansas] fan or something like that,” he said. “When I played in the [Atlantic Coast Conference], when you went on the road, you were never surprised when something like that happened.

“I don’t know if we’re good enough where they’d do that to us.”

That sleepless night is a microcosm of Jeff Capel and his Oklahoma team’s frustrating season. Hovering at 13-13 (4-8 in the Big 12) and in the midst of a downward spiral that has included players being cited for theft and injury troubles, it’s been a long season for a program that had a No. 2 seed in last year’s NCAA Tournament.

“We’ve had a lot of stuff happen,” said Capel. “Some of it has been self-inflicted. Some of it has been some of the decisions we’ve made as a team. One of the things I’ve always said, you can learn something through every situation.”

The next situation involves No. 1 ranked Kansas waiting for the Sooners Monday night – a chance to learn, indeed.

The biggest frustration lies in OU’s inability to develop any consistency. “That’s been the thing that’s been most frustrating,” said Capel. “You can’t prepare for injuries or things like that, but some of these things are things that we’ve done to ourselves.”

Legal troubles certainly fall into the ‘self-inflicted wounds’ category, but an overall attitude shift may be needed for the Sooners.

In Oklahoma’s 83-68 loss to Kansas State last Saturday, something caught Capel's eye. With the Wildcats leading by three heading into the half in a tight game, Capel and his Sooners team were walking back to the locker room when K-State senior Denis Clemente began trying to fire up his team.

“I heard somebody yelling. So I turned around and it was Clemente,” Capel said. “He’s yelling at his team. It was refreshing to see someone that has passion.”

Capel has a different term for what he’d like to see from his Sooners – a word that many coaches would keep far from their wish lists, for fear of misinterpretation.

“I call it submitting,” said Capel. “I talked to our team about that after we lost to Nebraska. We have to submit. I talked to them about that at the beginning of the year. You have to submit to the team and what’s best for the team.

“You have some guys, maybe every program has it, there’s a sense of entitlement. They just think that they’re okay. I want guys that have competitive spirit. I want guys where it’s not okay to lose. It’s not okay to come back to practice after a loss and smile like everything’s okay. It has to hurt. It has to mean something. It’s always meant something to me.

“This game and winning have always meant something to me. When I was growing up and my dad was coaching, winning was a big thing [that determined] the mood that my dad was going to be in when he came home. If his team won, we went out to eat and it was fun. If he didn’t, then it was usually kind of miserable when we went home. When I became a player in high school and college, it was the same way. Everything should be about winning.”

Because his family has the same drive to win, he needn’t look far for much inspiration.

“There’s a quote my mom actually sent to me this morning, ‘Tough times don’t last. Tough people do,’ “ said Capel. “We have to be tougher.”