PHILADELPHIA - Senior guard Jeff Capel has returned.
After an early-season hiatus from his role as a consistent scorer and contributor for the Blue Devils, Capel finally came out of hiding against Villanova Saturday.
Capel has struggled this season, hitting just 28.1 percent of his field goals and only shooting 20 percent from behind the three-point line. When asked if the Florida State game has been the low point in his season-when he went 0-for-9 from the field-Capel seemed to shudder at the memory.
"Florida State was the lowest I've ever been in my basketball career, and it won't ever get that low again, trust me," Capel said.
It was at the FSU game that the infamous booing against Capel occurred when he came into the game to replace Ricky Price. These boos have since been replaced by cheers of "Let's go Capel" from the Cameron crowd. Yet Capel has not let any cheers affect him.
"I'm not even thinking about what happened at the Florida State game," Capel said. "Sometimes when people are emotional they do things that they really don't mean. Whatever happened, happened. I'm above that and I'm a better person than to point fingers.
"Our fans have been great. They support our team better than any other fans in the country and they're a big reason why Duke has been successful. I always think they've been supportive of me throughout my four years."
But no matter what cheer the Crazies were chanting, nothing seemed to help Capel's slump. With each game that passed, Capel only seemed to get more frustrated.
"It's really tough [not to get down on yourself]," Capel said. "I did get down on myself, but with the help of my teammates, my family and my coaches, I was trying to fight through it and things are very positive right now."
Capel attributes the turnaround in his game against the Wildcats to some valuable advice given to him by friends and family.
"The game had gotten so big that it wasn't fun," Capel said. "Another piece of advice I got was from [former Blue Devil] Johnny Dawkins. After the Davidson game, I asked him what did he think was wrong with my game, and he told me that I was making the game bigger than it actually is-just think of it as a pick-up game that we play in Card Gym where you're just out there having fun and amongst friends.
"Today was the first game where I felt like I totally threw myself into the game. I just went out there and played and it was a lot of fun."
Capel managed to make his game look like fun too. His play yielded him player of the game honors after racking up 13 points. And although fellow guards Ricky Price (17 points) and Trajan Langdon (19 points) scored more than Capel, it was the senior tri-captain that helped Duke to it biggest lead of the game in the second half when he tossed a lay-up over his right shoulder and was fouled by Wildcat Alvin Williams to put Duke up by 15. The play lit up the Blue Devil bench.
Capel also worked to break the Wildcats' momentum. Following a dunk by Villanova senior Chuck Kornegay, the crowd at the CoreStates Center-the largest crowd to view a college basketball game in Pennsylvania history-started cheering noisily. On the other side of the court, Capel calmly did his job to silence the crowd by nailing a three-pointer just 10 seconds later.
"Jeff had a great game today," Langdon said. "He was out there playing with confidence and shooting the ball with confidence and that's his game. Once he does that, he's a great player."
Another factor might have been the presence of former Blue Devil Chris Collins, who graduated last year and is now playing professional basketball in Finland. Was it coincidence that Collins, who is second in both three-point attempts and shots made in the Duke record book, shows up and Duke's three-pointers start falling?
"It felt good to see Chris," Capel said, "He had me smiling basically the whole game just yelling stuff at me from behind the bench. It was great to hit those shots because if we didn't, we would have heard from him the whole time."
And now that Capel has had a solid game, no one expects him to stop there.
"Capel had his best week this week-of practice and playing, and I think he'll be on the ups now," coach Mike Krzyzewski said.
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