Jason Capel doesn’t want this to be the story, yet he understands why he has been contacted.
Nearly every Kansas basketball television broadcast mentions that Devonté Graham was originally committed to Appalachian State. And Capel, now a college basketball analyst, was the coach who secured that letter-of-intent before refusing to let Graham go.
“We were just able to get lucky in the early signing period,” Capel says by email, “and get a kid who later turned out to be an All-American.”
There was anger on both sides back then. Capel refused to budge when Graham wanted out of his pledge during his senior year of high school to pursue bigger programs.