Cliff and Mawot
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Well we can't ask the truth because some posters here say none of your business
What would Ace and Dylan separate value really be?
If Cliff was $1.3M then Ace is $200K
What was Sears value? Dylan is 50% of that
The defensive numbers may not indicate it but he was. When he wasn't in the defense suffered, they wouldn't even run the press after he fouled out in the game when they got eliminated in the big ten. He was also the rim protector and cheated off his man to help teammates if they were beat to the basket..also the best defensive rebounder, if he wasn't in the other team most likely getting second chances at possessions
Money guarantees nothing. It just keeps you in the game to compete. St John’s had no issues with NIL and they bowed out in the second round of the tourney. You could argue that even with the money but without Pitino their record would not have been so good.
As a program, the money coffers put you in position to compete but coaching and player performance are what ultimately gives you success.
One more thing, many here forget how dreadful the RU basketball program was pre-Pike era, especially during the Eddie Jordan years.
Love Pike as a person and program builder. He’s an old school coach functioning in this new school era of NIL and players that would normally be playing overseas, G League, fringe NBA players or one and dones.
Pike has to keep adjusting but stay true to his mantra of defensive minded basketball. No use in scoring 90 pts if you’re giving up 95. Fine with RU winning 70-68 games. Continue to bring in the best talent you can but surround with players that know and have been in the RU culture along with adding mature players (22-25 yrs old) that can add the physicality, leadership and abilities needed to reach the tournament and support talented young scorers that will no doubt have off scoring days, TO mistakes and low defensive chops in year one.
The lesson I learned from this season is no matter how talented your freshmen are, never give complete control of the offense to true freshmen by making sure you have complimentary consistent scorers with experience.
Agree that we should be expecting more from head coach but let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water. Oh and getting the school president and AD situations sorted out ASAP is tantamount. Our athletic dept is like a ship without a captain.
GO RU
As a program, the money coffers put you in position to compete but coaching and player performance are what ultimately gives you success.
One more thing, many here forget how dreadful the RU basketball program was pre-Pike era, especially during the Eddie Jordan years.
Love Pike as a person and program builder. He’s an old school coach functioning in this new school era of NIL and players that would normally be playing overseas, G League, fringe NBA players or one and dones.
Pike has to keep adjusting but stay true to his mantra of defensive minded basketball. No use in scoring 90 pts if you’re giving up 95. Fine with RU winning 70-68 games. Continue to bring in the best talent you can but surround with players that know and have been in the RU culture along with adding mature players (22-25 yrs old) that can add the physicality, leadership and abilities needed to reach the tournament and support talented young scorers that will no doubt have off scoring days, TO mistakes and low defensive chops in year one.
The lesson I learned from this season is no matter how talented your freshmen are, never give complete control of the offense to true freshmen by making sure you have complimentary consistent scorers with experience.
Agree that we should be expecting more from head coach but let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water. Oh and getting the school president and AD situations sorted out ASAP is tantamount. Our athletic dept is like a ship without a captain.
GO RU
Not Mag because he only played 14mpg.
I kind of agree with that.. for TRUE NIL payments. Like Dylan's contract with Fanatics is none of my business. Hopefully when there are actual player salaries through revenue sharing those will be disclosed.
Their true value overinflated by nba potential which has nothing to do with college
I still question the beginning of the year when Ace's 1st game in uniform came the day after his NIL deal was final. Probably was the hip, but the timing made me pause.
Where did Las Vegas money go? If most went to Ace and Dylan doesn't take a genius to understand why the entire roster didn't play hard like typical Pike teams do.
The money is table stakes. Without the money to compete for players you will either need an AMAZING coach (who will then likely leave.. for more money) or to just get lucky.
That's the thing right? Ace and Dylan got real NIL money. That should not be conflated with the pay-to-play money. I'm sure Fanatics and Nike are getting their money's worth. But they would not command that type of money as Freshman for pay-to-play.
so don't say RU got $3.5 million of players.
GRF's value of those 2 for 2024-2025 was negative.
Yes but I'm saying as far as this team goes, who was a better defensive player? Jmike? Jwill? Martini? Dervack? It has to be one of these 4 if not ace lol
I'm saying Mag was not the best defender on Rutgers.. because he refused to play. If he played.. sure. But I'll give the title to the guys who were actually out there on the court stopping guys from scoring. They were pretty good at it; we had a top 5 defense with Mag only out there 14mpg.
Lol No, we are talking about this past year...this guy Shelby is saying that ace and Dylan are selfish. I was saying ace was the ultimate team player this year taking on rolls he didn't sign up for as the defensive big man Rutgers lacked..
Martini probably over Ace.
Pikiell completely changed the way we played defense with switching on the perimeter even when there were no screens. It was more match up zone then man. Personally I think it was a mistake, but it was personnel that made him make the change. Ace had a lot to do with his decision i believe.
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Do you remember the Princeton game? When they kept setting screens until martini was the primary defender? He had to be removed from the game because they kept getting right to the basket.. come on man lol
i cant entertain this as a rational thought
most of the games they won were because of either dylan or ace or both
Martini may have been the most solid fundamentally but he obviously had physical limitations that could be picked on a la that Princeton game. Ace was an athletic freak but didn't really know what he was supposed to be doing on defense most of the time.
doesn't $1million plus anther $1 million from Vegas = $2 million? and + $3.5 = $5.5?
Did Ace and Dylan agree to forgo their $66,666 share each from Vega on top of the $1.75mil per to help get better supporting cast? Just wondering since we're talking about investing to win.
if we in fact only had a million it makes sense why we "lost out" on all these guys everyone keeps pointing to
i think maryland had the right idea spending what was available on an elite starting 5 and cobbling together a couple role players with the rest if there was any
willard has stated maryland did not have deep pockets and i would imagine if you paired ace with 2-3 guys you spent ALL of that money on (not necessarily Mag and Cliff) but if you simply have a Mag and Cliff type players to go with those 2 and a bonafide shooter as your 3rd portal transfer you would have a different outcome
all that depth we brought in and paid for was no better than spending 0 dollars on a bench
I don't think Ace and Dylan played selfish, but I reject the thought that Ace played defensive roles that he didn't sign up. Ace wasn't capable of guarding a perimeter player.
BIG QUESTION FOR YOU TO ANSWER (notice the use of caps)............Why was it Martini and not Ace guarding Lee?
Now I would have to go back to the film and see how much of things was Princeton (like Purdue) engineering the matchups.
Agreed, with a limited budget you are probably best off using ~all of it on like 6 players and just hoping to get lucky with not having injuries.
If the "Ace/Dylan $3m" money was ours and spread out more evenly then there is no Ace and Dylan on the team.
Also likely no Vegas tournament money.
So we have $3.5m to fund the team starting with JWill, Davis, Ogbole, Lathan, Grant, Dortch.
Clif immediately eats up $1m of that?
We still need potentially 4 starters plus bench guys.
JWill is given the reins likely so we only need 3 starters plus 3 bench players?
Martini wasn't guarding Lee. Princeton ran a play (over and over) to get him switched onto Lee intentionally because he was completely incapable of guarding him.
Ace got progressively better with his rotation and help defense as the year progressed. To the point the team looked significantly worse on defense when he wasn't in the game. He hid a lot of problems not having a true center would normally bring. Idk If you watch any Rutgers game and come away thinking martini was a better defender than ace. You can say ace was less disciplined, was lost sometimes and got burned sometimes cheating but idk how you can point to anyone on that team being a better defender...
I am okay with that.
This is a second order thing that doesn't really have anything to do with the point.
Not too sure we are paying Cliff $1mm even if we have it.
I guess?
I am not good enough at basketball to put together a whole team for you but I am confident of a couple things:
(1) Ace + Dylan, as PURELY COLLEGE BASKETBALL PLAYERS FOR 1 YEAR, were not worth $3.5mm on the "NIL" (read: disguised salary) market.
(2) Given #1, $3.5mm earmarked for them is worth less than $3.5mm that can be spent on the open market.
(2a) Probably a lot less
So, therefore:
(3) We would be much better off with $3.5mm to spend as we please compared to $3.5mm earmarked for them. At worst, we could just, you know, spend it on them. So we can't be worse off.
Ya that's not a great sequence to cite if you want to criticize Ace (or even Martini).
That was the Princeton HC running a master class on offense and hunting bad defenders.
Highlights don't help much.....does show how bad Derkack is defensively....and somerville lack of help on one plasy
Did you watch the final game? Ace was the head of the press lol he defended plenty of perimeter players. Princeton specifically targeted martini, set multiple screens until he was the primary defender. They picked on him like he was Steph Curry or Luka..
Here is another logical argument demonstrating that Ace/Dylan were not worth all that much purely in "pay for play".
(1) There was nothing stopping their other suitors from giving them additional NIL. Surely Duke or Auburn could have thrown in $1mm+ of "NIL" for them if they thought it was worth it.
(2) While $1mm on top of $1.5mm you are already getting is less impactful than $1mm on top of $0, it is still $1mm. I find it relatively hard to believe we would have held on to Ace and Dylan if they were being offered $1mm+ of additional money to go elsewhere.
(3) Thus, we can basically conclude that either
(a) We actually gave them ~all of our "NIL" money on top of their outside money in order to keep them OR
(b) The other teams did not offer them much additional money
(4) If it is (3a), then it explains why we had nothing at all to bring anyone in. If it is (3b), then it shows that these guys were not actually worth that much as college players and so we shouldn't be counting the $3.5mm of outside money as anything to do with the value Rutgers had on the court.
It would be like saying the Bulls had a salary of $500,000,000 because of MJs endorsement money. That's not how it works.
The money for Ace and Dylan did not come from the RU collective it was from Fanatics/Nike specifically for them and probably wouldve gone to them regardless of where they played
This idea that we should figure out how we would spend that money better is silly because we never would have had it if they were not here
Again look at the rest of the roster and that is what we could afford/what our coaches called "talent evaluation"
Martini in the game I felt led to less complete breakdowns as he was normally in the right place and communicated like no other player. He did have more lateral quickness then Ace (not my a lot or enough). Martini would box out, but not sure it helped and obviously he cant DREB like Ace.
evanmiya stats that show point per possession (adjusted for SoS) do point ever so slightly to Ace being our "best" or most effective defender. Jeremiah and Martini were real close behind.
Stats have some value but only 1 piece.
Did Ace improve defensively throughout the year? Yes, but not enough.
What's a Luka?
I wish we can find the 4 or 5 possessions so we can really see what happened. Who was on the floor? Who was guarding who? Where was potential help? Can we pinpoint a potential breakdown with the help? How bad did Martini really get burned?
Open ended because I am not sure.
I do know the last possession Derkack was bullied to the basket by Pierce without a screen I believe.
there seem to be conflicting reports on how the vegas money was shared..it went from its not being disclosed and its none of your business to not equally shared and now a new narrative has emerged that it was shared equally.
Ace and Dylan on the roster completely thinned out the amount and type of player that would come to RU.