I agree with you. While rolling with a repeat of our back court is far from slam dunk good enough, there’s reasonable upside to at least hope for. Frosh guards often do develop in the offseason. Even Tariq and Buchanan (who I really view as a wing thrasher - though he’ll likely play in the frontcourt more out of need) played in our system for the first time so there’s room for growth. J Mike has, in fact, improved every year he’s been at Rutgers. The point is, if retaining our core backcourt was known to be in the cards up front it would’ve made perfect sense to lock that in and “shoot for the stars” with the rest of our money. Get the 2 best starters we can get at the 4 and 5 and work from there. I really hope we’re quietly doing that and this outcome is still in play. If we end up with European unknowns, this is epic failure and not because we don’t have enough NIL. If we were trying to keep Lino and J Mike - focusing on portal guards at all was a mistake from the start.
Basketball Lino Mark set to return to Rutgers Basketball for 2026-27 season
- Thread starter Richie O
- Start date
It’s early but seems like a failure by Sullivan to predict the market as it pertains to Rutgers…
Any high demand, lower supply positions were always going to be expensive. Buying some other high major’s statistical version of J Mike (but with more upside hypothetically - let’s say a rising sophomore) probably wasn’t possible for us without forking out 7 figures or more. Once again, said player still has to choose RU over the other offers they are getting. If the money isn’t materially higher than another offer the player has to want to join our program more than the competition. That’s still a thing…
The problem w Francis as a point guard is that he doesn't have a great handle and would be a mess against pressure so you have to have other ball handlers w him. Once across mid court he can handle point in a slow offense, where just dribbles until the right pass opens up.
We have 2 primary ball handlers returning. He’s option number 3 - probably an average of 10ish mpg depending on match ups and ball handling support from Powers /Wooten/ Buchanan and the forward(s) we add.
It seems to me Rutgers is looking for another PG as has been reported and also basing it on our dim outlook on front court help
it’s mind boggling to underestimate the center and PF market 3 years in a row
We need a true big ten level guard so I hope they pull it off! Although, like everyone else our priority needs to be at the 4-5 spot!
The PG market isn’t cheap either. We have no frontcourt at all. We have a guy who played in garbage time of 6 games. We have a wing in Buchanan who can slide over to forward for filler minutes. We otherwise don’t have a single body in the frontcourt right now. How on earth can we be focused on PG????
We can't be. There shouldn't be thoughts of adding a PG until four front court players and a 2/3 wing have been added.
Unfortunately, I think for now we have to pause the search for a wing too unless Pike knows behind the scenes Ogbole is getting back. Wooten really did have an excellent senior year and is a prototypical 3 and D style player. I know he’s a frosh but we’ll likely also have Powers who will hopefully develop some and get at least a little better on D. Buchanan can keep a D honest from 3 too when used as a wing.
Replacing the frontcourt is going to cost a lot of money. We need to add a bare minimum of 3 servicable players who can play the 4 and the 5 because we don’t even have a Bryce Dortch type on the roster now.
Having Lino and Tariq in the starting five at same time is a risk because of height issues. Either one should to be the 6th man off bench in my opinion.
If Lino is 6th man, RU needs to get a quality starting PG.
If Tariq is off bench, RU needs to get a starting two guard.
GO RU
If Lino is 6th man, RU needs to get a quality starting PG.
If Tariq is off bench, RU needs to get a starting two guard.
GO RU
Yes - if there was no pay for play this would absolutely be the strategy. That’s not reality.
We have no frontcourt and have no prayer of landing the 2 starters we need in these roles for under 5M. We also have to assume that we’re paying a minimum of 3.5M to the 6 projected returning players and Wooten (7 guys in total). Let’s assume the DR kid got nothing (which Im sure isn’t true but whatever). That still leaves us with a hard max of 1.5M to work with for the rest of the roster. We couldn’t spend every penny of that on a PG or stud 2 even if we wanted to as we’d still need back ups for the frontcourt and we’d only have 10 players signed at that point. The math just doesn’t work.
Don’t disagree but we as fans don’t know what “X” is to solve the math problem. X being the total budget. We’ve heard that it’s $10MM but it could be more or less.
TBD.
GO RU
I hear you, just think we have enough information to know that the frontcourt has to be our top priority. We couldn’t win without a frontcourt with 2 NBA players.
Agree. To win at high level you need a solid starting five with a decent bench and you need some grown men on the floor.
GO RU
I’ll report back if I hit a middle aged growth spurt that adds a foot to my height over the next 4 months.
It can happen, right?
it’s not as big of an issue as some are making it out to be. Last season, Tariq sat for 13 mpg. Of the time he and Lino and/or J Mike were in the game together we played a full court press style for 8 or so mpg on average which actually worked pretty well for stretches with the scrappy combo. And then depending on the game, Tariq would run the point himself for short stints without either of the PGs (figure 5 min or so on average).
We really need to “hit” for a change on a guard the way we did with Geo. Wooten is the first backcourt pick up we’ve had in as long as I can remember where the scouting report says he plays D so I’m holding out some hope. If he’s a “player” off the bat it’d make a world of difference for the backcourt. Relying on a frosh is never great but I think we need to hope for the best and focus on up front for now.
Cliff was great the lobs - but couldn’t catch a bounce pass or a rebound cleanly….
Heard it on the pod as well as I believe nj.com report
but again nobody really knows
Richie reported a while back that Zinn and team reached their goal of $8m for men’s basketball and the new goal was closer to $10m. There seemed to be confidence that they would achieve that.
The Rant interview with Zinn gave off the impression it would be closer to 10M when the dust settles but nothing was stated outright. She said something like - we set a goal of doubling what we had and surpassed that goal so we set a new goal and we were positioned well with more things in the pipeline.
I fear the RU tax is worse than was predicted by our staff. Almost everyone we’ve been connected to seems to have a preexisting relationship with Pike which leads me to believe just like last year, nobody who isn’t connected previously like Tariq and Buchanan were are returning our calls.
I really hope I’m wrong. Would think we have enough money to throw a huge pot at 2 guys at least to land them and then figure the rest out after. We can’t compete without an upgrade to the starting frontcourt. So whatever it costs to convince a few guys to come here we need to pay.
You are a miserable poster and nothing but Debbie downer posts. Why do you root for Rutgers?
I’m down on pikiell the last few years
I’m a 10 year season ticket holder and an alum…
my entire family went to Rutgers… I’m actually very optimistic about the backcourt coming back
I like the signing they just made… my constructive criticism and immediate thought is ball dominant scorer like Francis
doubling down on ISO ball all more reason they need a true PG
I’m down on Pike as well and have thought this way watching his teams over the years since that Houston debacle.