Are we too deep?

[RUfan1977]

We could have 4 legit players and Pike is still going to take until February to figure out his rotations

 

[PSAL_Hoops]

We have no idea how “deep” we are. We were “paper deep” two years ago too. We brought in 2 all conference caliber mid major scorers in Dercack and Acuff who put up a ton of points. Another starter from a west coast conference who averaged double figures in PJ. A starter from a good Princeton team (Martini). Those were 4 newcomers expected to compete for starting roles alongside Ace and Dylan in addition to bringing a penciled in starter in J Will, and a frosh 4 star center who was expected to play a ton in Lathan. Ogbole was coming off injury and expected to share the minutes at center. That’s 9 players not even including Davis (who played plenty as a frosh and at worse expected to absorb the back up PG role for Dylan). So that’s 10 deep without even considering the other 2 frosh Grant or Dortch.

 

[LeapinLou]

There are two ways to look at this:

1. If all 15 guys are legit D-1 basketball talents, practice should be much more competitive and that will help our top 8 guys improve.

2. If we paid $2M in total for players 9-15, I would rather have 6 walk-ons and a $2M star to add to the starting lineup.

 

[PSAL_Hoops]

Since I just looked at the data relating to how comparatively bad Powers efficiency was last year (related to the other active string) - there’s one player on the list of only 9 I identified who saw meaningful PT on a high major last year that’s worth pointing to here to level set everyone’s expectations of “too much depth”.

Kyon Evans on UNC shot 32.8% for them from the field last year. This is after transferring in from Col State where he played 28 mph and averaged 10.6 ppg and 3.1 assists on 47.1% overall efficiency and 44.6% made 3s. Clearly his success in the MWC did not transfer to the ACC. We don’t have MWC transfers coming in. The players we’re relaying on played at an even lower level or in unknown levels in Europe. We really don’t know how much depth we will have. It’s TBD.

 

[tru2ru1]

There are two ways to look at this:

1. If all 15 guys are legit D-1 basketball talents, practice should be much more competitive and that will help our top 8 guys improve.

2. If we paid $2M in total for players 9-15, I would rather have 6 walk-ons and a $2M star to add to the starting lineup.

Lou, very doubtful RU paid $1 million total for players 9-15, plus $2 million does not buy a star in the B1G

 

[RUfan1977]

We have no idea how “deep” we are. We were “paper deep” two years ago too. We brought in 2 all conference caliber mid major scorers in Dercack and Acuff who put up a ton of points. Another starter from a west coast conference who averaged double figures in PJ. A starter from a good Princeton team (Martini). Those were 4 newcomers expected to compete for starting roles alongside Ace and Dylan in addition to bringing a penciled in starter in J Will, and a frosh 4 star center who was expected to play a ton in Lathan. Ogbole was coming off injury and expected to share the minutes at center. That’s 9 players not even including Davis (who played plenty as a frosh and at worse expected to absorb the back up PG role for Dylan). So that’s 10 deep without even considering the other 2 frosh Grant or Dortch.

Your point is definitely a cautionary tale! Acuff had the broken foot and the other transfers didn’t rise to the occasion and often seemed afraid to shoot, except for Derkack who would drive to the basket where he was too small to effectively get his shot up. There is no guarantee that any of the transfers will be able to compete at the Big Ten level. Francis and Cam Spencer both rose to the challenge, but it is not a given that any of the new players will.

 

[rucoe89]

These last two international players Diego and Mateo seem pretty good which gives us our 14th and 15th players on the roster. Here's the thing, there isn't a program in the country that has 15 scholarship worthy players on its team other than us. Wouldn't it have been smarter to take the NILs of Jones, Smith, and Syndor, maybe even Buca, and spent it on a single player? Let's assume that the combination of these 4 players is $2M. $2M would have gotten us one of the top transfers in the portal this year. And we would have a roster of 12 or 13 players with a couple of walkon types. It still would have been a deep team, yes someone like Wooten would have gotten a few minutes a game rather than now he is probably barely playing at all, but if you had an all B1G caliber player alongside Francis and Gurdak (who's skillset I love) along with complimentary players like Buchanan and Powers and maybe Diego, we could have had an NCAA team. Now with what we have it will certainly be better than last season but how much better, maybe we reach .500? And if it's much better that means we caught lightning in a bottle and someone like Diego is a superstar which means someone like Smith doesn't play at all. What do you think?

We honestly have no idea how good this depth is or is not until we start play. On paper, don't know if we have a roster that can crack the top 50% of the league. With that standard, we are not too deep. We just have a lot of bodies. The trick is whether this staff can develop and pull out a set of 8 to 9 that can get us into the top 50% of the conference.