If anything sums up App State Men’s Basketball 86-64 loss to High Point earlier, it’s this video. It even caught the attention of SportsCenter. The loss was App State’s largest margin of defeat at a home game in 7 years and it was against a school many of you probably haven’t even heard of.
How bad was this loss? Well earlier in the offseason I did an RPI analysis to figure out which games we were “supposed” to win. I only found 5 D-I teams we were supposed to beat. This was one of them. In fact, I forecasted a dreadful 9-20 season and we are now behind my forecast. Actually, the first game we will be favored in is over a month away.
So is it time for someone to lose their job? I hate kneejerk reactions by fans that say “Fire the coach!” But in this situation, maybe. Coach Capel hasn’t done much of anything in his tenure here, not that we were THAT good before he got here. His only experience before getting the job was 1 year of being an assistant coach here at App and his last name being Capel. Frankly, he should have never been hired in the first place
Looking back, we almost hired Matt McMahon as head coach but went with Capel instead. Now McMahon is over at Murray State and helped turn it into last year’s Cinderella team going 31-2.
Capel gets paid about $150K a year plus bonuses and the buyout clause is roughly the same amount. He has 1 year left on his contract. So do we wait until then to see where we are at? Or do we cough up the money now?
The bottom line is, I don’t care what we do, but we need to get SERIOUS about men’s basketball. It’s hurting us in conference realignment, it’s hurting our reputation as a school….and it doesn’t have to be that way. We have the best facilities in the conference. We should run this joint. I hope our guys turn it around and I’ll continue to support them. But turning around our basketball program should be our administration’s highest priority. If it turns out a change of leadership is needed, they should do it.
