It’s hard to know just how much credit Jeff Capel deserves for maybe the greatest transformation by a Sooner basketball player from one season to the next. Because that’s what’s happened to Blake Griffin, who was all about potential a year ago but might be about leading the Sooners to the Final Four this season.

What appears clear where Capel’s concerned is he has at least facilitated an atmosphere where players can get to where they’re supposed to be going and fast.

Perhaps necessity is the mother of invention, because when Capel’s arrival happened to coincide with the “thanks, but no thanks” reaction of the great majority of Kelvin Sampson’s final Sooner recruiting class (all of which, Keith Clark aside, ended up lasting longer than he did in the college game) Capel had to figure some way of getting something resembling a both-ends-of-the-court game out of Longar Longar.

Or perhaps he knew how to do it all along.

At the very least, unlike his predecessor, he wasn’t in the business of deciding what his players couldn’t do before they were given the chance. Oh, what he might have done with Jabahri Brown or Larry Turner.

In the end, teams will always reflect the guy leading them. Sampson’s were perpetually tough. Also tight as a drum. And that chip on their shoulder could be as debilitating as it was beneficial.

It’s hardly a coaching trait, yet it has to be a positive every day in practice and every moment there’s time on the floor in the middle of a close game, but no Sooner head coach seems so comfortable in his or her own skin as the third-year former Dukie who finds his team unbeaten and ranked No. 5 in the nation.

Indeed, it’s a positive that goes beyond what rubs off on his players. It’s a positive fans have taken note of, even if they’re unaware.

Officially, 10,331 saw the Sooners beat American opening night, 9,625 watched them destroy Mississippi Valley State, 10,793 watched a classic the night OU clipped Davidson, 11,076 saw the Sooners struggle with Gardner-Webb and 11,499 were there for a one-point victory over Southern Cal.

The truth is none of those counts are too accurate, because they reflect tickets sold rather than fans in seats. Yet the whole truth is, well before the football season’s over, this team’s drawing better than any Sooner men’s team in several years and don’t think for a second a big part of it isn’t how easy it is to root for a team coached by Jeff Capel.

Sooner athletic director Joe Castiglione hasn’t batted a thousand. Kalani Mahi and Scott Evans will forever be truth of that. But he’s done very well and Bob Stoops will forever be his tape-measure home run. Stealing the young basketball coach away from Virginia Commonwealth appears to be another hire that’s left the park.

We’ll know more come the conference and still more come tournament time. But what we already know remains telling. Using past as prologue, like last season, the Sooners should go as far as they’re supposed to, perhaps farther.

It’s about all anybody can ask.

Clay Horning

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