TBH, I don’t think we have much of a choice. Thinking Pike really needs a solid 5 for his defense to work - so that money will make everyone else better. There are going to be tradeoffs, no doubt. If we go all in on a 5, we may not get a prototypical 4.
We should go after Najia Hines...but will we?
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TBH, I don’t think we have much of a choice. Thinking Pike really needs a solid 5 for his defense to work - so that money will make everyone else better. There are going to be tradeoffs, no doubt. If we go all in on a 5, we may not get a prototypical 4.
I just think it's unreasonable and too much of a risk to spend half your budget on one guy you really have no idea or assurances he'd make the difference. His current team doesn't think so and really what has he proven in one year of play. Maybe teams with 15 t0 18 million to spend can afford to take chances,we can't.
You seem to have a lot of ideas and respectfully I would be curious to see how you’d allocate the funds… assuming we have 8-8.5 million as reported how would you spend it
keep in mind we passed on a guy of EO level of play and let him leave … so how much do you think it costs to get something better than that?
a quality big ten center costs no less than 3 million based on power 4 transfer portal signing the last 3 years I think that’s the data people are going by to determine how much we need to allocate
it’s not coming out of peoples behinds… the market for a power 4 center has been at least that for a few years … I wish that wasn’t the case and we’ve tried as a program to work around that fact and it’s not gone well
I don’t know man, we brought in 7 “freshmen” last year and so far only one has committed to return, and that guy couldn’t crack the 3-deep at center this past season.
This idea of recruiting 4 high school prospects and “hoping 2 or 3 stick” is not a strategy for success. It’s more like a prayer.
We need to spend money on proven college performers each year, with the understanding that we may only have them here for one season.
I agree that this is what he’s probably doing.
I disagree that he should do this. In fact, I rarely agree with Lou but if that’s what ends up happening I think Zinn made the wrong decision. He should’ve been fired in that case. We have no ties to Euro. No edge whatsoever in that market and every guy we’ve brought in from there has been a complete bust.
It's a terrible idea.
We've had 18 HS recruits over the past 5 years.
2 "stuck" - Davis and Ogbole
TBD on Mark and Powers
But sure, all a sudden we'll start getting 2 to 3 each year that will stick.
Fair. I was thinking with real money we can do a little better - the pool of current college transfer centers is both expensive and underwhelming.
You kind of summarized my other fear - that the last few years have made it harder for him to attract talent.
We just have to pony up the funds. Even if 5M only gets us a slightly better center than Ogbole (like the Kansas back up), it should at least still get us a pretty good forward to pair with it. We need to exist the market for a PG immediately. The fact that we were shopping there without locking in a frontcourt suggests Sullivan was rip off. No frontcourt = Eddie Jordan team
It’s too much of a risk not to. If our front court isn’t B1G caliber, we will be shopping for a new coach in a year.
We have 10 million to spend - 5 and 4s are expensive but worth it. There are a lot of guards out there. This is really just a normal distribution - guy ls over 6-10 are significantly fewer than guys who are 6 l-4. We’ve had solid offense the last couple of seasons, but we can’t defend and can’t rebound. The only way to address that is with a solid 5 and 4.
This thread started when he rumored to cost 3M. Apparently he’s learned he’s worth a lot more than this. I don’t think anyone on here suggested we can afford to go as high as 5M, and I’m sure SHU can’t either but if they turned him down for 3M clearly that was just dumb. Do you not realize what complete garbage we’ll get at the 5 spot for under 2M? That’s shaping up to be the entry price for someone playable at the high major level - or something around there.
Who did we pass on ?? Nwuli?
Who's saying not to pay for a big man? First of all some of you guys act like we have unlimited funds. Second , no way is Hines worth the risk at his purported 4 -5 million price. I realize alot of things and one of them is we need more money-- I've been preaching that for years and doing more than my part to help. Try it.
But that wasn’t what anyone said. This thread was started when it was thought Hines would cost around 3M. We were talking about spending a COMBINED 5M on 2 players for the frontcourt. Then it came out that Hines would cost more like 4.5M and most if not all of us realize that’s out of range.
If you read above - I said 3-3.5M probably our upper limit. Really depends on the market for a BIG level forward. Upper limit for the combined starting frontcourt - 5.5M.
if we’re still shopping for a PG before a frontcourt Pike needs to be directly called out. We have 2 PGs, plus Tariq can handle for stretches against most teams. We shouldn’t spend another dime on portal guards until this is addressed and we see what we have remaining.
I’ve contributed every dollar I can afford to to Rutgers going back to being a student there as I’m sure you have
my question is how good of a center do you think we’ll get for 2 mil if you aren’t okay spending 4-5 on one and the top 3-5 centers in the portal are all commanding that
my point earlier with passing on EO who is Ogbole for reference not Nwuli … is that we’re shopping for guys with similar production and ceiling to him which means terrible front court play … while also being reported we’re looking for a starting PG? Seriously?
And Big O averaged per 40:
9.9 ppg / 12.6 rpg / 2.5 bpg
Against a tougher schedule. Yet most of our fans preached all season that we’d easily find a better back up than him for 400k or less. Ha ha.
One high ankle sprain away from blowing half the entire budget, insanity!
No - he’s still relevant. Provides context for our situation in the frontcourt.
Bryce Dortch has a lot to thank us for as it turns out. Kid may have had to play out of position, but I bet having back up BIG center on his resume can translate into a much bigger payday for him than if he had stayed at his natural position. If you want to pay under $1M for someone who will see the floor a guy like him is what your looking at, basically.
I get it, I am with you we should have dumped a boatload of our resources into him or similar level bigs. Not so sure that is gonna happen. But the part that is no longer relevant is talking about Hines coming here. He is outside our budget, but we still have money to spend if we do have this $10 Mil and yet we have not signed a portal big man in the $3 Mil range. We also have not acquired a starting power forward who could also function for spot minutes at Center. Maybe we will, but having serious doubts. I also wanted money spent on Center, Power forward and other starters but they have thus far emphasized retention of existing players and Lewis Duarte. Meanwhile, not one new starter has been brought in, whether it be a Center, a Power Forward, a wing, a point guard. I would have emphasized getting new starters to team up with TF (if I could only afford two or three then so be it), obviously first and foremost starters for the frontcourt. I would have acquired as much new starting talent as I could while retaining TF, then just backfilled the roster with last year’s retention guys that still fit the budget, if they don’t fit then say bye bye and wish them luck and some more Duarte types to complete a roster until I was out of money. They seem to have taken the opposite approach and started with Duarte and the retention priority. I don’t understand it and very skeptical of how Pike and GM Sullivan are approaching this.
Mara is a curious case. He was buried on the bench at UCLA. He gets to Michigan and turns into a dominant center. Same thing with Cadeau. He was a 5 star bust at UNC and turns into the B1G's best PG.
Huh? Cadeau started every game and actually contributed just as much for UNC (more minutes, more assists, more rebounds, shot better %, 1 less point per game). Mara contributed less but played in every game at UCLA and was 6th in scoring as a sophomore.
Interesting you bring that up because everyone is stunned and baffled Hines is going to command 4-5 million but his stat line was very similar to Mara the year he transferred and he got paid handsome by Michigan off similar numbers
prime example that the center market A) is very inflated and B) is based a lot on projection as bigs don’t all develop equally
Cadeau was similarly a top 10 positional portal transfer so it’s a bit of a weird take they were total crap shoots… they were highly sought after
He’s a lot younger and UConn has had enormous success developing front court players
Hurley also hasn’t missed on portal targets
And reportedly for more than $4 million, which is nuts and explains why RU was never in the running.