The Jeff Capel era officially starts today as Pitt basketball will have their first official practice of the season this afternoon.
Prior to concentrating on this year’s team, Capel was out yesterday trying to recruit some future players.
It’s becoming quite clear that Anthony Walker is someone that Capel really has his eye on and wants to add to his Class of 2019.
Two weeks ago, Walker made his official visit to Pitt and then a couple days after that, Capel made a trip to the Brewster Academy in New Hampshire to watch him practice.
Capel wasn’t done visiting Walker as yesterday he made another trip to Brewster in order to see him.
The latest visit was on the heels of Walker making his official visit to Rhode Island.
Up next for this 4-star forward will be official visits to Miami on October 5th and then his last one to VCU, October 19th. Although it’s being reported otherwise, Walker told PSN this morning that he isn’t visiting Kansas this coming weekend.
Capel’s priority is to add at least two big men to next year’s class and Walker (6-8, 200) is a primary target.
Currently, Rivals rates Walker as a Top 70 recruit and one of the Top 15 forwards in the country.
Another top talent that Pitt is staying involved with is 2019 5-star center Kofi Cockburn.
This national recruit narrowed his long list of offers down to eight and Pitt made the cut.
Andrew Slater (@Andrew__Slater) was first to report that Cockburn’s final eight teams are Pitt, Syracuse, Kansas, Illinois, UConn, LSU, Florida State and St. John’s.
Cockburn will reportedly announce his official visits soon and it would be a huge accomplishment for Capel to get Cockburn to use one of his visits on Pitt.
Along with recruiting seniors, Capel is also working on high school juniors.
Corey Evans of Rivals reports that Capel was in Virginia yesterday checking on 2020 forward Henry Coleman from Trinity Episcopal in Richmond, Virginia.
Coleman (6-7, 205) is a 4-star recruit and ranked as one of the Top 40 juniors in the country.
A few weeks ago, the Pitt staff hosted Coleman as he made an unofficial visit to Pittsburgh for the Pitt-Penn State game.
Along with Pitt, Coleman also holds offers from Virginia, VCU, Oklahoma State, Vanderbilt, Florida, Kansas, LSU, Maryland and NC State.
