Jeff Capel would like to be a college basketball coach again one day, but he isn't thinking about succeeding Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, his alma mater and new employer.
Capel, who played for Krzyzewski in the mid-1990s, is back in Durham as an assistant coach after spending the past nine years as the coach at Oklahoma and VCU.
He is the only assistant on staff with head-coaching experience, but all he wants right now is to be the best assistant he can be for Duke and Krzyzewski, 64 and still going strong after 31 seasons with the Blue Devils.
"I don't even think like that; not at all," Capel said about the possibility of taking over after Krzyzewski retires. "That thought has never crossed my mind. I know it's inevitably going to happen, but I don't ever see anyone else on the sideline for Duke."
Capel, 36, is in his first full week in his new job. He's already calling recruits, getting acquainted with Duke's returning players and incoming freshmen and in making his way around a campus that has changed greatly since he left in 1997.
Oklahoma fired Capel on March 14, and he returned to North Carolina the next day to visit and see family — he grew up in Fayetteville. In a visit to Durham, Krzyzewski raised the possibility of Capel coming back and joining the Duke staff.
Capel didn't immediately accept. He thought some open coaching jobs were appealing, and he was considered for some. He thought he might turn to television work for the 2011-12 season if he couldn't find a head-coaching job that fit.
He also needed time to think. He said that in some ways, he wasn't surprised Oklahoma fired him, but that in other ways, he was.
"With the path my career had taken, I just didn't see it," Capel said. "I had kind of lived the gravy train. I had really, really good players, and we had been very successful my first seven years as a coach. Then the bottom fell out."
Capel knows that being fired is part of the business — his father, Jeff, had been fired at Old Dominion — but he still was hurt when he was dismissed two seasons after taking Oklahoma to a regional championship game in the 2008 NCAA tournament.
His first call after being fired was to his wife. His second was to his father. He said he holds no grudges, because when one door shuts, another opens.
"The first thing was I had to get myself together," Capel said. "When you get fired, especially when it's so public, it takes a toll on you. It takes a toll on your family.
"I needed to take a step back a little bit and step away from the whole thing and get an idea of what went wrong. Most importantly, let me take some time and make sure my family is OK and my wife is OK. And make sure I'm OK."
Krzyzewski's thought was that if Capel did decide to come back, the best way to use him would be as an assistant, out of the spotlight.
Krzyzewski was willing to restructure his staff and create a new position for assistant Nate James to make room for an addition. Capel said he was honored that his old coach would go to such lengths to get him back.
"I think maybe initially he was concerned that I would look at that as a step backwards, or something that's beneath me," Capel said. "I'm not a guy to have an ego problem. There's not too much that's beneath me. Once he offered, it was a no-brainer."
Capel said that Duke is the only school at which he would be comfortable as an assistant next season and that he doesn't envision problems in that role, even after being in charge for nine years.
"I've always been a guy that's really appreciated and loved being part of a team," he said. "And when you're part of a team, you have a role. And everyone's role is very, very, very important."
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