Centers and forwards from mid majors should be the focus
- Thread starter goru7
- Start date
i know the panicans want to say you need 15-20 million but this article says 10-12 million
www.nytimes.com
Want your men’s college basketball team to contend next year? It might take $10 million
More teams are spending more money this offseason, with the average high-major roster likely costing eight figures.
www.nytimes.com
Yes - but to be clear, whatever we spent was almost certainly less (considerably so) than what it would’ve cost us in the open portal market for anyone comparable. For a program sitting where we are right now, retention, like for like, is almost always going to be materially cheaper.
That’s why it always made strategic sense to focus on getting much better at one concentrated area and improve modestly through development of retained players elsewhere. Are we doing this? We’ll soon find out. Front court has to project to be materially better on D and notably better O to have a chance at being competitive.
Except that your retention of all these bench players is impacting the ability to focus on getting better in the frontcourt.
"The frontcourt is bad but at least we retained all those bench players"
The problem isn't retention.
It's retention of bench players at the expense of improving the starting lineup.
Both were needed.
You continue to underestimate (drastically) the reality of the current Rutgers tax. Sought after players don’t want to come play for us right now and there’s almost certainly a very significant surcharge needed to incentivize anyone Pike isn’t already connected with to entertain the idea of transferring to Rutgers.
Buying 5 new starters as you had hoped we would do was never in the cards because to do so and actually land 5 guys who would truly project to be upgrades would’ve cost Rutgers a premium of potentially 2M or more in aggregate over other competitive offers those players were getting from more desirable programs. It’s not out of the realm, for example, that we would/will have to offer 3M to entice a center being offered 2.2M by other programs. This may well be a cost of doing business for us at center, but we can’t do it across the board. That “impact” PG everyone is talking about us needing might be willing to go to a top tier program for $1.5M but RU won’t even sniff the conversation for those types of guys for under $2M. The math simply doesn’t allow for us to shop the portal they way you wanted us to. It was never in the cards. We would have to overpay for quality depth too - the math wouldn’t even work though if we went with 5 top guys and filled out the rest of the roster with frosh / Duarte types. We certainly can’t go with walk on level 6-13.
Our only option was to identify a couple positions where we needed the upgrade most and prioritize getting 2-3 quality guys to combine with retaining our best pieces at MV to surround them with. There was no other strategy that could make the math work unless you wanted to roll the dice with a lot of long shot mid major types who do not project to be able to make the jump (and hope they surprise like Tariq did). I’m not sure why this would be better though that retaining what we have. Do you doubt for a minute that Lino Mark couldn’t have put up big numbers in the NEC. Of course he could’ve.
I couldn't care less about the "quality of the bench" until after the actual starters are addressed.
Would our bench be worse than Mark, Davis, Ware, Duarte, Powers?
Sure. Don't care.
I'm not half assing the frontcourt and starting wings just to have "quality depth".
So yes, give me all the low/mid major lottery tickets as bench players.
If that means better starters.
Are you correctly point out - we have to overpay.
I'd rather overpay for players actually on the court.
You dont seem to understand that we don’t have the money period to buy a frontcourt (a servicable BIG 4 and 5) and then ALSO purchase 3 players who would CLEARLY be better than having to start Lino, Tariq and Buchanan at the 1-3. Go back and look at Jordan Dercack’s Merrimack stats for a refresher. At best, that would be what we would be able to get at PG while paying at least a 50% premium cost over what we’re probably paying Lino to get the Kennedy kid in his place. and he might not even be better than Lino at the next level. If you wanted a PG who was proven at the high major or better mid major level we’d have had to pay over $2M for that in the open market. We can’t start the season with 5 players total and all walk ons. We need at least 7 guys who can check into the game as nobody averages 40 mpg. Again, the math doesn’t work on trying to land 5 proven players.
The low majors still cost money. They aren’t free unless you want spots 6-13 to be an open try out of kids not on schollie. That would be free.
Let me spell it out for you. To buy 5 guaranteed high major caliber starters, Rutgers University would be looking at shelling out an average of $2M+ for each one - with the front court players costing much more than than that - maybe the SG /wing a bit less. 5 x 2 last I checked is 10 - the upper limit of our budget. We can’t afford this.
E is doing the right thing - go collect that kind of cash to be a 2nd backup at an elite program (or a starter at a lower level). We need to go bigger for our starter but imagine the backup will be Ware.