There is plenty to be excited about for the Pitt basketball team as it heads to Italy.
“The history, the food, the wine,” joked Panthers coach Jeff Capel, who enters his second year at Pittsburgh.
The main focus, however, will be basketball.
Pitt will leave for a ten day trip through Italy on Monday, August 5 and return home on August 14. While there, they will play three games against international competition.
“We’re ready to go,” Capel said. “We’ve had good practices. We’re getting the chance to see another country and to experience the history in different places in Italy that we have an opportunity to go. Our guys are excited.”
After deciding to not take the trip last season due to the uncertainty of the roster before his first season, Capel hopes the opportunity will provide a meaningful experience for his players, both on and off the court.
“I felt like this would be a good time for us with having a new class, a big class and with our freshmen becoming sophomores and relying on them even more than we did last year, we figured this would be a really good time to do this,” Capel said.
There are certain things Capel is curious to learn and, while bonding and team chemistry is key, he is focused on what they do on the court.
Pitt will take on the Netherlands National B Team, the Florence All-Stars and the Vincenza All-Stars.
“It gives us the opportunity as a coaching staff to see if things with our returning guys that we’ve tried to work on since April, where are we with those things. How can we incorporate those into real live games situations with our new guys since they’ve been here.”
“How does that fit, what does the team look like right now. Who are we right now and what are the strengths, what are the things we’re not so good at? When we get back, we’ll have the chance to evaluate that.”
The Panthers are afforded ten extra days of practice in the summer because of this trip. So, for a young team, the additional time on the floor could come in handy.
This will be the first trip to Italy for Capel, but he has been on similar ventures with previous teams. While with Duke, the team went overseas during a summer. As a head coach, he has taken trips in the fall with VCU and Oklahoma to England and Vancouver, respectively.
While there, the team will spend three days in Rome and take part in guided tours of the Colosseum, Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Spanish Steps, Trevie Fountain and Pantheon.
“One of the great things about this trip is that it affords an opportunity the majority of our guys who have never been out of the country,” he said. “To have a chance to do that together, as a team, where the don’t have to pay for it and it’s with our team.
“They’ll get the experiences that we’ll have a chance to go through over there to see the different sites, seeing the culture, a different country and playing different rules.”