Gurdacks hands, coordination, post moves

[RUfan1977]

As much as I've been down on Pike and staff, I have to give them credit for both the CCSU wing and here for the VT center. The first one, from DR, not so much. Let's see how this plays out. Also good they kept a few from this year.

It's shaping up to a rather young team though.

It won’t be as young a team as last year when we had to rely on so many freshmen.

 

[-RUFAN4LIFE-]

If GM Sullivan gets Sydnor, a starting PG and a competent backup center, then I will say he knows what he’s doing and did good work. That would mean we added 4 starters (not sure if he can pull that off), a backup center, and retained pieces from last season that most would agree we wanted back for this season. The job is not done to grade him out yet, but he’s headed in a good direction thus far.

Yes, this was similar to what I had laid out after the season. Zinn getting the team nearly $10m was key and it was a pretty good and/or lucky estimate when I said they had to stay in the $2-2.5m range for a starting big. Otherwise it didn't work if they went above that range.

 

[PSAL_Hoops]

I thought you believed Pike needed a rim protecting, defensive anchor, lob and catch, pick and roll center?

Gurdack is NONE of those things!

I love the pick up! Young, power conf experience, big, strong, great hands, finish with both. My concern is Pike’s ISO offense highlights none of that. I know this further shines a light on our glaring hole T PG.

With this pick up, have you changed your mind on our potential next year ? Do you feel they need a 4 to do some of those things? It feels counter to what you were looking for. Curious !

Depends what we end up with at PF. Gurdack isn’t an awful defensive center. Just because he doesn’t block a lot of shots doesn’t mean he gets scored on easily. I’m much more concerned about Smith’s D, than Gurdack’s.

 

[PSAL_Hoops]

It is 2026. This guy doesn't fit the current college game.

RU defense was bad last year (based on stats). How is a non shot blocking 5 going to help that?

His numbers say he is a slightly above offensive rebounder and slightly below average defensive rebounder.....this is with playing part time and being more fresh.

This is like fantasy baseball (or football). You think you need steals, but the price is through the roof. Do you overpay and hurt the other 9 categories or do you say F it and refuse to pay for steals and spend money elsewhere.

I am sure RU needs big men, but the price tag is just to high. I didn't watch a single possession of RU this year but I am going to guess the mistake we are making are keeping and paying Mark and Francis and spending money elsewhere. The defensive numbers were bad last year. I am guessing Francis had a part in that.

Find the positions that there is more supply and better cheap talent. Spending 20% on your budget on a 2000s power forward in calendar 2026 is dumb.

I doubt we overpaid for either of them. That is, if we started over buying a backcourt from scratch, I don’t think we would’ve ended up A) spending materially less or B) getting better players (it would be more likely we would get worse players unless we spent a lot more - not less. Think of it like the workforce. Retaining is almost always cheaper than bringing in new seasoned experience.

Pike did the smart thing. He kept the better of the two units in the backcourt. The bar is extremely low to upgrade the frontcourt. The question is by how much. Smith can’t hurt us much on D on a relative basis because it would be hard to be worse than Grant was. That’s the good news.

The bad new, obviously is that we couldn’t even win when we had Ace and Dylan - the D just wasn’t good enough. And it’s still not. We need to add some better defenders to mix in.

 

[PSAL_Hoops]

I think Pike got the memo that "offense" is what wins games these days. Yes, you also need defense if you want to compete at the very highest level, but let's face it, we don't have the budget to pay for players who are good at everything. We have a budget where -- if spent correctly -- we can get good players who can possibly get us back to the Bubble.

And I'm fine with that until the NIL machine really gets going.

I hope we get a few more defensive guys.,,