Gevonte Ware set to return to Rutgers Basketball for 2026-27 season
Rutgers Basketball locked down their second returnee of the offseason, as big man Gevonte Ware announces his return for the 2026-27 season.
Basketball Gevonte Ware set to return to Rutgers Basketball for 2026-27 season
- Thread starter Richie O
- Start date
Am I safe to assume this is end of bench depth or is Bob and others going to insult me again.
I hope he is the third string center??? Not the backup playing 12-15 minutes per game?
For the record, I like Ware. I thought he showed some sign of being quick and decisive. Then I thought I misread those signs. I thought the notion of player development was dead. Maybe under the coming rule changes things will swing back. Maybe they're planning on blowing the payroll on just 3 guys who can run the show. Maybe they're thinking he's better than and high schooler we could land at this point when Knight has one foot out the door.
Agree as I said with Duarte signing … maybe they are taking some lottery tickets for cheap or 0 for spots 11-12-13 etc and going to take the approach to spend heavily on the actual rotation
I hope you’re right, that’s what I am looking for is that the bulk of our core/starters are not even here yet. We must still have a good chunk of NIL available to make that happen.
Like a quarterback or center I watched his footwork - thought it was positive. Thought he deserved more minutes to judge here. Can't be no worse than Dortch minutes - size could improve and replace Bryce's alotted time.
Obviously he is, and I've not been a fan of his all year. Pretty thin skinned if you thought I was insulting you.
I know we all want an all star team but it’s good to see kids actually continuing in a program too
He couldn’t even get minutes over Ogbole who was downright awful
Bigs take longer to develop. Can’t write off a freshman.
Guess pike is afraid he cant fill a legit roster again or can’t be bothered to do so.
Hopefully Ware will prove to be a big RU can count on .
I don't expect him to be an All B1G but hope he's a big help.
I don't expect him to be an All B1G but hope he's a big help.
Fans are amazing. Complaining in the other thread that we have no big men depth.... then complaining here when what is obviously a big man depth piece decides to stay.
Fans can be ridiculous but in fairness to the fans is he strong enough, tall enough, quick enough and athletic enough to play in the BiG Ten?
Ware doesn’t seem as strong as Ogbole, but few players are. At 6’9”, he will be undersized in height compared to other Big Ten centers. My biggest concern is his athleticism. In the limited time he played, he seemed slow and seemed to lack hops. Hope I’m wrong. That being said, I admit he is much quicker and is a much better jumper than me. Of course, I don’t have the athleticism to compete in the Big Ten and I am closing in on 70 years old.
My point was "depth piece" (As 3rd or emergency 2nd option at C/F). Og was pretty much a starter for most of the season. If Ware is our starter next season, we are in trouble.
This would’ve been fine if DePaul’s Maker wasn’t also a current target. We’re for sure not planning to carry more than 3 centers on the team so it appears this will be the level competing for the back up role to replace Bryce Dortch. I’m not optimistic that either will be an upgrade (downgrade is far more likely to be honest). Depressing.
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I’m not sure why Rutgers wouldn’t carry three centers. This past season Dortch was forced to play backup center because Ware wasn’t ready or good enough, Fall wasn’t good enough and Ogbole was primarily the starter. Ogbole, Fall and Ware are clearly centers, albeit not very good ones at least at the Big Ten level. Hopefully they still go out and get two centers who will not be overmatched in Big Ten play.
Oh - we’ll carry 3 centers. My pessimistic guess is that we’ll overpay for a Euro like Denis with a couple inches on him and hope it turns out like it did for Illinois (but it won’t).
But nevermind that. The point I was making is we already resigned Ware and were in conversations with Maker so that would lock up the back up spot. Neither of those guys projects to be a better back up than Dortch was.
Edit - sorry I’ll fix my post. I meant to say we won’t carry more than 3.
As someone who would like to be more optimistic about the upcoming season I hate to say I agree with your concerns.
Based off what I saw this year, I agree, but who knows, Ware w a year development could be better, although very different than Dortch. He should be 3rd string 4/5 tho.
I would think he would’ve checked into the Creighton game in the least if he’s shown any signs at all of being ready.
All we need is for Pike to travel to the Bayou and find a Neon Boudeaux type.
There's plenty of time for next season to be depressed about the team. Dont see a point in getting depressed or wearing a badge of honor predicting doom and gloom about the prospects of a team before we even know what the final roster will be.
Its certainly reasonable in my opinion to express disappointment with being on a path to make identical mistakes to last portal cycle. Going after guys like Maker mirrors the decision to go after Fall. Ogbole is a slightly above average BACK UP high major center on a bubble team. Some would say he’s not even that, but that’s bull crap. Anyone materially worse than him, cannot help us though and is going to be a complete waste of money.
If we weren’t confident we could land 2 legit bigs he should’ve been brought back as the first big off the bench immediately
100% - and if we saw the price tag across the board for a legit center was simply too high we should’ve paid Ogbole and pivoted to 2 PF types to pair with him instead. Some of our fans would’ve hated that but if our frontcourt room turns out to be unknown Euro / Maker / Ware at center and low major portal forward / new Euro / Buchanan at the 4 our alternative strategy failed miserably. You can’t try to get everything in the portal when your in RU situation. Just matching the offers in the field isn’t going to land us anyone.
Now that you say it landing 2 legit PF types would’ve been the value city type shopping Rutgers should’ve done all along
there never was a doubt a legit big 10 center would cost at least 3 million and probably closer to 4 and if we were never going to be willing to spend that the resources never should’ve been wasted or time
what will be curious to find out when dust settles is how much it cost to retain the back court and that might give better intel to what we were working with
if we had to overpay to keep mark buchanan and Francis then it makes sense though I’ll have a different set of issues with that allocation of resources because the premise is retention is cheaper