All four Triangle-area NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball programs will be represented in the 2017 Triangle Men’s Basketball Tip-Off Luncheon to be held Friday, September 22 at the Embassy Suites Cary. The panel will feature Jeff Capel, Associate Head Coach at Duke University; Kevin Keatts, Head Coach at NC State University; LeVelle Moton, Head Coach at NC Central University; and Roy Williams, Head Coach at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. The panel will be set up in a “living room chat”-style format with WRAL-TV Sports Anchor, Jeff Gravley, serving as moderator.

The luncheon is hosted by the Triangle Sports Commission and is the kick-off event of the 1987 U.S. Olympic Festival 30th Anniversary Celebration activities taking place on September 22-23, 2017.

The Men’s Basketball programs at Duke, NC Central, NC State, and UNC are perennially among the top college programs in the country, with three of the four teams having made the 2017 NCAA Tournament, which was won by the North Carolina Tar Heels. Strong recruiting among the schools bodes well for the continuing competitiveness of each of the programs. While the coaches will speak about the upcoming 2017/2018 season, they will also be sharing personal insights about their coaching success, business topics, and even personal interests.

Registration and networking for the luncheon are 11:30am to 12pm. Lunch begins at noon and the program will get underway shortly thereafter. Individual tickets are $50 and can be purchased by clicking here or visiting http://www.trianglesportscommission.com/usof30.  Sponsor tables of 10 are also available for $600 and can be purchased by contacting Tess Heron at the Triangle Sports Commission at 919.678.1652 or  theron@trianglesportscommission.com

Jeff Capel: Jeff Capel is the Associate Head Coach for the Duke Blue Devils. Capel comes from a basketball family. His father was an assistant coach for the Charlotte Bobcats and head coach for Old Dominion University while his brother played for UNC. Capel played for Duke from 1993 through 1997 and spent two years after college playing professionally. His first coaching job was an assistant coach under his father at ODU. After one year, he moved on to an assistant head coach position at Virginia Commonwealth University. One year later, he was promoted to head coach and became the youngest Division 1 head coach at the time. From 2006 to 2011, Capel was the head coach for Oklahoma, leading the team to two appearances in the NCAA tournament. In 2011, he returned to his alma mater as the Associate Head Coach under Coach Krzyzewski.

Kevin Keatts: Kevin Keatts will begin his first season as NC State’s Head Coach this fall. After playing in college at Ferrum College, he started his coaching career at Southern Michigan University as an assistant coach. After one year he moved on to Hargrove Military Academy as an assistant coach and was later promoted to head coach. In 2001, Keatts moved to Marshall as an assistant coach, but returned to Hargrove after two years and remained head coach until 2011. From 2011 to 2014, he was an assistant coach at Louisville and won an NCAA championship in 2013. In 2014, he became the head coach for UNC-Wilmington and won the CAA Championship three years in a row and was named CAA Coach of the Year two years in a row. In 2017, he was hired as NC State’s head coach.

LeVelle Moton: LeVelle Moton is the head coach of the NC Central Eagles. Moton grew up in Raleigh and was a star player at Enloe High School. Moton is an alumnus of NCCU and was a standout player there from 1992 to 1996. After college he played four years of professional basketball and then began coaching as a head coach at Sanderson High School. He returned to his alma mater as an assistant coach in 2007. After two years, he was promoted to head coach. In his eight years as head coach, Moton has won three MEAC Regular Season Championships and two MEAC Tournament Championships. This year he guided the Eagles to their second NCAA Tournament berth and was named MEAC Coach of the Year. Also in 2017, Moton was inducted into the Wake County Public School System Hall of Fame.

Roy Williams: Roy Williams is the head coach of UNC-Chapel Hill Tar Heels. Williams played one year of J.V. basketball at UNC, and in 1973 began his coaching career at Charles D. Owen High School in Black Mountain, NC. Williams began his college coaching in 1978 as an assistant coach at UNC under Dean Smith. In 1988, Williams became the head coach at Kansas and led his team to fourteen NCAA tournaments. At Kansas, he won the Big Eight Coach of the Year four times, Big Twelve Coach of the Year three times, and the AP Coach of the Year once. In 2003, Williams, a College Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, returned to UNC as the head coach where he has led the Tar Heels to three NCAA Championships, eight ACC titles, and both ACC and National Coach of the Year honors.