Pitt won its third straight game Wednesday night, beating the North Carolina Tar Heels for the third straight time in the Dean Dome. Jamarius Burton sank a pair of free throws with 3.4 seconds left to give the Panthers the lead for the final time, and Nike Sibande got a hand on Caleb Love’s last effort shot attempt with 0.6 seconds left to seal the victory.
But folks might quickly forget how Pitt won this game or how Carolina lost it because what happened after the game sort of overshadowed everything.
When we look back on this game, we might refer to it as, “The Jason Capel Game.”
After Pitt won, its players piled into the hallway outside of the visitors’ locker room (which is right next to the media workroom at the Smith Center), hooting and hollering in celebration. When they settled down, the coaches came around the corner, and Pitt assistant coach Jason Capel was yelling. And not in a celebratory manner.
“Y’all gonna disrespect me?” Capel shouted. “All I did for this program? Y’all gonna boo me? I held this [expletive] together when Matt Doherty tore it apart. [Expletive] that [expletive].”
Jason Capel played at UNC from 1998 through 2002. He was a starter on a Final Four team in 2000, but he was also a senior captain on one of the worst teams in UNC history – the one coached by Matt Doherty that went 8-20 in the 2001-02 campaign. Some UNC fans still feel a certain type of way about that era of Carolina basketball, apparently.
And tensions between Capel and his alma mater have been tense for a while.
After the game, Capel told the Raleigh News & Observer in a text message, “Shouldn’t be a story. I shouldn’t be a story. Pitt winning should be the story.”
But it’s a little too late for that.
Here’s what we know about the beef between Jason Capel and UNC.